:iic;- 


m 


KI^^^^^H 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 


Mrs.  }lyrtle  TuHy 


MAN'S   PLACE   IN   NATURE 


AND  OTHER 

ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ESSAYS 


BY 

THOMAS  H.   HUXLEY 


Specially  Published 

for 

THE    BRUNSWICK    SUBSCRIPTION    CO. 

by 

D.    APPLETON    &    COMPANY 

NEW   YORK 

1915 


Authorized  Edition, 


College 
Library 

PREFACE. 


I  AM  very  well  aware  that  the  old  are  prone  to 
regard  their  early  performances  with  much  more 
interest  than  their  contemporaries  of  a  younger 
generation  are  likely  to  take  in  them;  moreover, 
I  freely  admit  that  my  younger  contemporaries 
might  employ  their  time  better  than  in  perusing 
the  three  essays,  written  thirty-two  years  ago, 
which  occupy  the  first  place  in  this  volume.  This 
confession  is  the  more  needful,  inasmuch  as  all  the 
premises  of  the  argument  set  forth  in  "Man's 
Place  in  Nature  "  and  most  of  the  conclusions  de- 
duced from  them,  are  now  to  be  met  with  among 
other  well-established  and,  indeed,  elementary 
truths,  in  the  text-books. 

Paradoxical  as  the  statement  may  seem,  how- 
ever, it  is  Just  because  every  well-informed  student 
of  biology  ought  to  be  tempted  to  throw  these 
essays,  and  especially  the  second,  "  On  the  Rela- 
tions of  Man  to  the  Lower  Animals,"  aside,  as  a 
fair  mathematician  might  dispense  with  the  re- 
perusal  of  Cocker^s  arithmetic,  that  I  think  it 


Vi  PREFACE. 

worth  while  to  reprint  them;  and  entertain  the 
hope  that  the  story  of  their  origin  and  early  fate 
may  not  he  devoid  of  a  certain  antiquarian  inter- 
est, even  if  it  possess  no  other. 

In  1854,  it  became  my  duty  to  teach  the  prin- 
ciples of  biological  science  with  especial  reference 
to  paleontology.  The  first  result  of  addressing 
myself  to  the  business  I  had  taken  in  hand,  was 
the  discovery  of  my  own  lamentable  ignorance  in 
respect  of  many  parts  of  the  vast  field  of  knowl- 
edge through  which  I  had  undertaken  to  guide 
others.  The  second  result  was  a  resolution  to 
amend  this  state  of  things  to  the  best  of  my 
ability;  to  which  end,  I  surveyed  the  ground; 
and  having  made  out  what  were  the  main  posi- 
tions to  be  captured,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
I  must  try  to  carry  them  by  concentrating  all  the 
energy  I  possessed  upon  each  in  turn.  So  I  set 
to  work  to  know  something  of  my  own  knowledge 
of  all  the  various  disciplines  included  under  the 
head  of  Biology;  and  to  acquaint  myself,  at  first 
hand,  with  the  evidence  for  and  against  the  extant 
solutions  of  the  greater  problems  of  that  science. 
I  have  reason  to  believe  that  wise  heads  were 
shaken  over  my  apparent  divagations — now  into 
the  province  of  Physiology  or  Histology,  now  into 
that  of  Comparative  Anatomy,  of  Development,  of 
Zoology,  of  Paleontology,  or  of  Ethnology.  But 
even  at  this  time,  when  I  am,  or  ought  to  be,  so 
much  wiser,  I  really  do  not  see  that  I  could  have 


PREFACE.  VU 

done  better.  And  my  method  had  this  great  ad- 
vantage; it  involved  the  certainty  that  somebody 
would  profit  by  my  effort  to  teach  properly.  What- 
ever my  hearers  might  do,  I  myself  always  learned 
something  by  lecturing.  And  to  those  who  have 
experience  of  what  a  heart-breaking  business  teach- 
ing is — how  much  the  can't-learns  and  won't- 
learns  and  don't-learns  predominate  over  the  do- 
learns — will  understand  the  comfort  of  that  re- 
flection. 

Among  the  many  problems  which  came  under 
my  consideration,  the  position  of  the  human  species 
in  zoological  classification  was   one   of   the   most 
serious.     Indeed,  at  that  time,  it  was  a  burning 
question  in  the  sense  that  those  who  touched  it 
were  almost  certain  to  burn  their  fingers  severely. 
It  was  not  so  very  long  since  my  kind  friend  Sir 
William  Lawrence,  one  of  the  ablest  men  whom 
I  have  known,  had  been  well-nigh  ostracized  for 
his  book  "  On  Man,"  which  now  might  be  read 
in  a  Sunday-school  without  surprising  anybody;  it 
was  only  a  few  years,  since  the  electors  to  the  chair 
of  Natural  History  in  a  famous  northern  univer- 
sity had  refused  to  invite  a  very  distinguished  man 
to  occupy  it  because  he  advocated  the  doctrine  of 
the  diversity  of  species  of  mankind,  or  what  was 
called  "  polygeny."     Even  among  those  who  con- 
sidered man  from  the  point  of  view,  not  of  vulgar 
prejudice,  but  of  science,  opinions  lay  poles  asun- 
der.    Linnaeus  had  taken  one  view,  Cuvier  another; 


viii  PREFACE. 

and,  among  my  senior  contemporaries,  men  like 
Lyell,  regarded  by  many  as  revolutionaries  of  the 
deepest  dye,  were  strongly  opposed  to  anything 
which  tended  to  break  down  the  barrier  between 
man  and  the  rest  of  the  animal  world. 

My  own  mind  was  by  no  means  definitely  made 
up  about  this  matter  when,  in  the  year  1857,  a 
paper  was  read  before  the  Linnaean  Society  "  On 
the  Characters,  Principles  of  Division  and  Primary 
Groups  of  the  Class  Mammalia,"  in  which  certain 
anatomical  features  of  the  brain  were  said  to  be 
"  peculiar  to  the  genus  Homo,"  and  were  made 
the  chief  ground  for  separating  that  genus  from  all 
other  mammals,  and  placing  him  in  a  division, 
"  Archencephala,"  apart  from,  and  superior  to,  all 
the  rest.  As  these  statements  did  not  agree  with 
the  opinions  I  had  formed,  I  set  to  work  to  rein- 
vestigate the  subject;  and  soon  satisfied  myself 
that  the  structures  in  question  were  not  peculiar  to 
Man,  but  were  shared  by  him  with  all  the  higher 
and  many  of  the  lower  apes.  I  embarked  in  no 
public  discussion  of  these  matters;  but  my  atten- 
tion being  thus  drawn  to  them,  I  studied  the  whole 
question  of  the  structural  relations  of  Man  to  the 
next  lower  existing  forms,  with  much  care.  And, 
of  course,  I  embodied  my  conclusions  in  my  teach- 
ing. 

Matters  were  at  this  point,  when  "  The  Origin 
of  Species "  appeared.  The  weighty  sentence 
"  Light  will  be  thrown  on  the  origin  of  man  and 


PREFACE.  IX 

his  history  "  (1st  ed.  p.  488)  was  not  only  in  full 
harmony  with  the  conclusions  at  which  I  had  ar- 
rived, respecting  the  structural  relatione  of  apes 
and  men,  but  was  strongly  supported  by  them. 
And  inasmuch  as  Development  and  Vertebrate 
Anatomy  were  not  among  Mr.  Darwin's  many  spe- 
cialities, it  appeared  to  me  that  I  should  not  be 
intruding  on  the  ground  he  had  made  his  own,  if 
I  discussed  this  part  of  the  general  question.  In 
fact,  I  thought  that  I  might  probably  serve  the 
cause  of  evolution  by  doing  so. 

Some  experience  of  popular  lecturing  had 
convinced  me  that  the  necessity  of  making  things 
plain  to  uninstructed  people,  was  one  of  the  very 
best  means  of  clearing  up  the  obscure  corners  in 
one's  own  mind.  So,  in  1860,  I  took  the  Relation 
of  Man  to  the  Lower  Animals,  for  the  subject  of 
the  six  lectures  to  working  men  which  it  was  my 
duty  to  deliver.  It  was  also  in  1860,  that  this 
topic  was  discussed  before  a  Jury  of  experts,  at 
the  meeting  of  the  British  Association  at  Oxford; 
and,  from  that  time,  a  sort  of  running  fight  on  the 
same  subject  was  carried  on,  until  it  culminated 
at  the  Cambridge  meeting  of  the  Association  in 
1862,  by  my  friend  Sir  W.  Flower's  public  demon- 
stration of  the  existence  in  the  apes  of  those  cere- 
bral characters  which  had  been  said  to  be  peculiar 
to  man. 

"  Magna  est  Veritas  et  praevalebit!  "     Truth  is 
great,  certainly,  but,  considering  her  greatness,  it  is 


X  PREFACE. 

curious  what  a  long  time  she  is  apt  to  take  about 
prevailing.  When,  towards  the  end  of  1862,  I 
had  finished  writing  "  Man's  Place  in  Nature," 
I  could  say  with  a  good  conscience,  that  my  con- 
clusions "  had  not  been  formed  hastily  or  enun- 
ciated crudely."  I  thought  I  had  earned  the  right 
to  publish  them  and  even  fancied  I  might  be 
thanked,  rather  than  reproved,  for  so  doing.  How- 
ever, in  my  anxiety  to  promulgate  nothing  errone- 
ous, I  asked  a  highly  competent  anatomist  and  very 
good  friend  of  mine  to  look  through  my  proofs  and, 
if  he  could,  point  out  any  errors  of  fact.  I  was 
well  pleased  when  he  returned  them  without  criti- 
cism on  that  score;  but  my  satisfaction  was  speedily 
dashed  by  the  very  earnest  warning,  as  to  the  con- 
sequences of  publication,  which  my  friend's  inter- 
est in  my  welfare  led  him  to  give.  But  as  I  have 
confessed  elsewhere,  when  I  was  a  young  man, 
there  was  just  a  little — a  mere  soupgon — in  my 
composition  of  that  tenacity  of  purpose  which  has 
another  name;  and  I  felt  sure  that  all  the  evil 
things  prophesied  would  not  be  so  painful  to  me 
as  the  giving  up  that  which  I  had  resolved  to  do, 
upon  grounds  which  I  conceived  to  be  right.  So 
the  book  came  out;  and  I  must  do  my  friend  the 
justice  to  say  that  his  forecast  was  completely 
justified.  The  Boreas  of  criticism  blew  his  hard- 
est blasts  of  misrepresentation  and  ridicule  for 
some  years;  and  I  was  even  as  one  of  the  wicked. 
Indeed,  it  surprises  me,  at  times,  to  think  how  any 


PREFACE.  xi 

one  who  had  sunk  so  low  could  since  have  emerged 
into,,  at  any  rate,  relative  respectability.  Person- 
ally, like  the  non-corvine  personages  in  the  In- 
goldsby  legend,  I  did  not  feel  "  one  penny  the 
worse."  Translated  into  several  languages,  the 
book  reached  a  wider  public  than  I  had  ever  hoped 
for;  being  largely  helped,  I  imagine,  by  the  Ernul- 
phine  advertisements  to  which  I  have  referred.  It 
has  had  the  honour  of  being  freely  utilized,  without 
acknowledgment,  by  writers  of  repute;  and,  finally, 
it  achieved  the  fate,  which  is  the  euthanasia  of  a 
scientific  work,  of  being  inclosed  among  the  rubble 
of  the  foundations  of  later  knowledge  and  for- 
gotten. 

To  my  observation,  human  nature  has  not  sen- 
sibly changed  during  the  last  thirty  years.  I 
doubt  not  that  there  are  truths  as  plainly  obvious 
and  as  generally  denied,  as  those  contained  in 
"  Man's  Place  in  Nature,"  now  awaiting  enuncia- 
tion. If  there  is  a  young  man  of  the  present  gen- 
eration, who  has  taken  as  much  trouble  as  I  did 
to  assure  himself  that  they  are  truths,  let  him 
come  out  with  them,  without  troubling  his  head 
about  the  barking  of  the  dogs  of  St.  Ernulphus. 
"  Veritas  pra;valebit  " — some  day;  and,  even  if  she 
does  not  prevail  in  his  time,  he  himself  will  be  all 
the  better  and  the  wiser  for  having  tried  to  help 
her.  And  let  him  recollect  that  such  great  reward 
is  full  payment  for  all  his  labour  and  pains. 

"  Man's  Place  in  Nature,"  perhaps,  may  still  be 


Xii  PREFACE. 

useful  as  an  introduction  to  the  subject;  but,  as  any 
interest  which  attaches  to  it  must  be  mainly  his- 
torical, I  have  thought  it  right  to  leave  the  essays 
untouched.  The  history  of  the  long  controversy 
about  the  structure  of  the  brain,  following  upon 
the  second  dissertation,  in  the  original  edition, 
however,  is  omitted.  The  verdict  of  science  has 
long  been  pronounced  upon  the  questions  at  issue; 
and  no  good  purpose  can  be  served  by  preserving 
the  memory  of  the  details  of  the  suit. 

In  many  passages,  the  reader  who  is  acquainted 
with  the  present  state  of  science,  will  observe  much 
room  for  addition;  but,  in  all  cases,  the  supple- 
ments required,  are,  I  believe,  either  indiiierent  to 
the  argument  or  would  strengthen  it. 


CONTENTS. 


PAQB 
Oy   THE   NATURAL   HISTORY   OF   THE    MAN-LIKE   APE3   .      .  1 


II 

ON"    THE    RELATIONS    OF    MAN    TO    THE    LOWER    ANIMALS      .         77 

III 
ON    SOME    FOSSIL    REMAINS    OF    MAN 157 

TV 

ON   THE   METHODS   AND    RESULTS   OF    ETHNOLOGY    [1865]  .      210 

V 
ON   SOME   FIXED   POINTS   IN   BRITISH   ETHNOLOGY    [1871].      254 

VI 
ON  THE   ARYAN   QUESTION   [1890] 273 

%*  The  first  threo  Essays  were  published  in  January,  186:}, 
under  the  title  of  "  Man's  Place  in  Nature  ";  the  fourth  Essay 
appeared  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  tlie  fifth  in  the  Con- 
temporary Review,  and  they  were  published  in  Critiques  and 
Addresses.  The  Essay  on  the  Aryan  Question  appeared  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century  for  November,  1890. 

xiii 


MAN'S   PLACE   IN  NATURE. 
Advertisement  to  the  Reader. 

The  greater  part  of  the  substance  of  the  fol- 
lowing Essays  has  already  been  published  in  the 
form  of  Oral  Discourses,  addressed  to  widely  dif- 
ferent audiences  during  the  past  three  years. 

Upon  the  subject  of  the  second  Essay,  I  de- 
livered six  Lectures  to  the  Working  Men  in  1860, 
and  two,  to  the  members  of  the  Philosophical  In- 
stitution of  Edinburgh  in  1862.  The  readiness 
with  which  my  audience  followed  my  arguments, 
on  these  occasions,  encourages  me  to  hope  that  I 
have  not  committed  the  error,  into  which  working 
men  of  science  so  readily  fall,  of  obscuring  my 
meaning  by  unnecessary  technicalities:  while,  the 
length  of  the  period  during  which  the  subject, 
under  its  various  aspects,  has  been  present  to  my 
mind,  may  suffice  to  satisfy  the  Reader  that,  my 
conclusions,  be  they  right  or  be  they  wrong,  have 
not  been  formed  hastily  or  enunciated  crudely. 

T.  H.  H. 

London:  January,  1863. 

XV 


I. 

ON  THE  NATUKAL  HISTORY  OF  THE 
MAN-LIKE  APES. 

Ancient  traditions,  when  tested  by  the  severe 
processes  of  modem  investigation,  commonly 
enough  fade  away  into  mere  dreams:  but  it  is  sin- 
gular how  often  the  dream  turns  out  to  have  been 
a  half-waking  one,  presaging  a  reality.  Ovid  fore- 
shadowed the  discoveries  of  the  geologist:  the  At- 
lantis was  an  imagination,  but  Columbus  found  a 
western  world:  and  though  the  quaint  forms  of 
Centaurs  and  Satyrs  have  an  existence  only  in  the 
realms  of  art,  creatures  approaching  man  more 
nearly  than  they  in  essential  structure,  and  yet  as 
thoroughly  brutal  as  the  goat's  or  horse's  half  of 
the  mythical  compound,  are  now  not  only  known, 
but  notorious. 

I  have  not  met  with  any  notice  of  one  of  these 
Man-like  Apes  of  earlier  date  than  that  con- 
tained in  Pigafetta's  "  Description  of  the  king- 
165  1 


2 


THE  MAN-LIKE  APES. 


dom  of  Congo,"  *  drawn  up  from  the  notes  of  a 
Portuguese  sailor,  Eduardo  Lopez,  and  published 
in  1598.  The  tenth  chapter  of  this  work  is  en- 
titled "  De  Animalibus  qua3  in  hac  provincia  re- 


FlG.  1. — Simiae  magnatum  delicise. — De  Bry,  1598. 

periuntur,"  and  contains  a  brief  passage  to  the 
effect  that  "  in  the  Songan  country,  on  the  banks 
of  the  Zaire,  there  are  multitudes  of  apes,  which 
afford  great  delight  to  the  nobles  by  imitating 

•  Regnum  Congo:  hoc  est  Vera  Descriptio  Regni 
Africani  quod  tam  ab  incolis  quam  Lusitanis  Con- 
Gus  appellatur,  per  Philippum  Pigafettam,  olim  ex 
Edoardo  Lopez  acroamatis  lingua  Italica  excerpta,  num 
Latio  sermone  donata  ab  August.  Cassiod.  Reinio.  Iconi- 
bus  et  imaginibus  rerum  memorabilium  quasi  vivns,  opera 
et  industria  Joan.  Theodori  et  Joan,  Israelis  de  Bry,  fra- 
trum  exornata.    Francofurti,  mdxcviii. 


X  THE  PONGO  AND  ENGECO.  3 

human  gestures."  As  this  might  apply  to  almost 
any  kind  of  apes,  I  should  have  thouglit  little  of 
it,  had  not  the  brothers  De  Bry,  whose  engravings 
illustrate  the  work,  thought  fit,  in  their  eleventh 
"  Argumentum,"  to  figure  two  of  these  "  Simiae 
magnatum  deliciae."  So  much  of  the  plate  as 
contains  these  apes  is  faithfully  copied  in  the 
woodcut  (Fig.  1),  and  it  will  be  observed  that  they 
are  tail-less,  long-armed,  and  large-eared;  and  about 
the  size  of  Chimpanzeee.  It  may  be  that  these  apes 
are  as  much  figments  of  the  imagination  of  the  in- 
genious brothers  as  the  winged,  two-legged,  croco- 
dile-headed dragon  which  adorns  the  same  plate; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  that  the  artists 
have  constructed  their  drawings  from  some  essen- 
tially faithful  description  of  a  Gorilla  or  a  Chim- 
panzee. And,  in  either  case,  though  these  fig- 
ures are  worth  a  passing  notice,  the  oldest  trust- 
worthy and  definite  accounts  of  any  animal  of  this 
kind  date  from  the  17th  century,  and  are  due  to  an 
Englishman. 

The  first  edition  of  that  most  amusing  old 
book,  "  Purchas  his  Pilgrimage,"  was  published 
in  1613,  and  therein  are  to  be  found  many  refer- 
ences to  the  statements  of  one  whom  Purchas  terms 
"  Andrew  Battell  (my  neere  neighbour,  dwelling 
at  Leigh  in  Essex)  who  served  under  Manuel  Sil- 
vera  Perera,  Governor  under  the  King  of  Spaine, 
at  his  city  of  Saint  Paul,  and  with  him  went  farre 
into  the  countrey  of  Angola ";  and  again,  "  my 


4  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  X 

friend,  Andrew  Battle,  who  lived  in  the  kingdom 
of  Congo  many  yeares,"  and  who,  "  upon  some 
quarell  betwixt  the  Portugals  (among  whom  he  was 
a  sergeant  of  a  band)  and  him,  lived  eight  or  nine 
moneths  in  the  woodes."  From  this  weather- 
beaten  old  soldier,  Purchas  was  amazed  to  hear  "  of 
a  kinde  of  Great  Apes,  if  they  might  so  be  termed, 
of  the  height  of  a  man,  but  twice  as  bigge  in  fea- 
ture of  their  limmes,  with  strength  proportion- 
able, hairie  all  over,  otherwise  altogether  like  men 
and  women  in  their  whole  bodily  shape.*  They 
lived  on  such  wilde  fruits  as  the  trees  and  woods 
yielded,  and  in  the  night  time  lodged  on  the  trees." 
This  extract  is,  however,  less  detailed  and  cleai 
in  its  statements  than  a  passage  in  the  third 
chapter  of  the  second  part  of  another  work — 
"  Purchas  his  Pilgrimes,"  published  in  1625,  by 
the  same  author — which  has  been  often,  though 
hardly  ever  quite  rightly,  cited.  The  chapter  is 
entitled,  "  The  strange  adventures  of  Andrew 
Battell,  of  Leigh  in  Essex,  sent  by  the  Portugals 
prisoner  to  Angola,  who  lived  there  and  in  the 
adioining  regions  neere  eighteene  yeeres."  And 
the  sixth  section  of  this  chapter  is  headed — "  Of 
the  Provinces  of  Bongo,  Calongo,  Mayombe,  Mani- 
kesocke,  Motimbas:  of  the  Ape  Monster  Pongo, 
their  hunting:  Idolatries;  and  divers  other  obser- 
vations." 

*  "  Except  this  that  their  legges  had  no  calves." — [Ed. 
1626.]  And  in  a  marginal  note,  "  These  great  apes  are 
called  Pongo's." 


I  THJi  POMaO.  5 

"This  province  (Calongo)  toward  the  east  bordereth 
upon  Bongo,  and  toward  the  north  upon  Mayombe,  which 
is  nineteen  leagues  from  Longo  along  the  coast. 

"  This  province  of  Mayombe  is  all  woods  and  groves, 
so  overgrowne  that  a  man  may  travaile  twentie  days  in 
the  shadow  without  any  sunne  or  heat.  Here  is  no  kind 
of  come  nor  graine,  so  that  the  people  liveth  onely  upon 
plantanes  and  roots  of  sundrie  sorts,  very  good;  and  nutsj 
nor  any  kinde  of  tame  cattell,  nor  hens. 

"  But  they  have  great  store  of  elephants'  flesh,  which 
they  gi'eatly  esteeme,  and  many  kinds  of  wild  beasts ;  and 
great  store  of  fish.  Here  is  a  great  sandy  bay,  two  leagues 
to  the  northward  of  Cape  Negro,*  which  is  the  port  of 
Mayombe.  Sometimes  the  Portugals  lade  logwood  in  this 
bay.  Here  is  a  great  river,  called  Banna :  in  the  winter  it 
hath  no  barre,  because  the  generall  winds  cause  a  great 
sea.  But  when  the  sunne  hath  his  south  declination,  then 
a  boat  may  goe  in;  for  then  it  is  smooth  because  of  the 
raine.  This  river  is  very  gieat,  and  hath  many  ilands  and 
people  dwelling  in  them.  The  woods  are  so  covered  with 
baboones,  monkies,  apes  and  parrots,  that  it  will  feare  any 
man  to  travaile  in  them  alone.  Here  are  also  two  kinds 
of  monsters,  which  are  common  in  these  woods,  and  very 
dangerous. 

"  The  greatest  of  these  two  monsters  is  called  Pongo 
in  their  language,  and  the  lesser  is  called  Engeco.  This 
Pongo  is  in  all  proportion  like  a  man ;  but  that  he  is  more 
like  a  giant  in  stature  than  a  man;  for  he  is  very  tall, 
and  hath  a  man's  face,  hollow-eyed,  with  long  haire  upon 
his  browes.  His  face  and  eares  are  without  haire,  and 
his  hands  also.  His  bodie  is  full  of  haire,  but  not  very 
thicke;  and  it  is  of  a  dunnish  colour. 

"  He  differeth  not  from  a  man  but  in  his  legs;  for  they 
have  no  ealfe.    Hee  goeth  alwaies  upon  his  legs,  and  car- 

*  Purcfias'  note. — Cape  Negro  is  in  16  degrees  south  of 
the  line. 


6  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  l 

rieth  his  hands  clasped  in  the  nape  of  his  necke  when  he 
goeth  upon  the  ground.  They  sleepe  in  the  trees,  and 
build  shelters  for  the  raine.  They  feed  upon  fruit  that 
they  find  in  the  woods,  and  upon  nuts,  for  they  eate  no 
kind  of  flesh.  They  cannot  speake,  and  have  no  under- 
standing more  than  a  beast.  The  people  of  the  countrie, 
when  they  travaile  in  the  woods  make  fires  where  they 
sleepe  in  the  night;  and  in  the  morning,  when  they  are 
gone,  the  Pongoes  will  come  and  sit  about  the  fire  till  it 
goeth  out;  for  they  have  no  understanding  to  lay  the 
wood  together.  They  goe  many  together  and  kill  many 
negioes  that  travaile  iu  the  woods.  Many  times  they  fall 
upon  the  elephants  which  come  to  feed  where  they  be, 
and  so  beate  them  with  their  clubbed  fists,  and  pieces  of 
wood,  that  they  will  runne  roaring  away  from  them. 
Those  Pongoes  are  never  taken  alive  because  they  are  so 
strong,  that  ten  men  cannot  hold  one  of  them;  but  yet 
they  take  many  of  their  young  ones  \vith  poisoned  ar- 
rowes. 

"  The  young  Pongo  hangeth  on  his  mother's  belly  -with 
his  hands  fast  clasped  about  her,  so  that  when  the  coun- 
trie people  kill  any  of  the  females  they  take  the  young 
one,  which  hangeth  fpst  upon  his  mother. 

"  When  they  die  among  themselves,  they  cover  the 
dead  with  great  heaps  of  boughs  and  wood,  which  is  com- 
monly found  in  the  forest."  * 


*  Purchas'  marginal  note,  p.  982: — "The  Pongo  is  a 
giant  ape.  He  told  me  in  conference  with  him,  that  one 
of  these  Pongoes  tooke  a  negro  boy  of  his  which  lived  a 
moneth  with  them.  For  they  hurt  not  those  which  they 
surprise  at  unawares,  except  they  look  on  them;  which 
he  avoyded.  He  said  their  highth  was  like  a  man's  but 
their  bignesse  twice  as  great.  I  saw  the  negro  boy.  What 
the  other  monster  should  be  he  hath  forgotten  to  relate; 
and  these  papers  came  to  my  hand  since  his  death,  which, 
otherwise,  in  my  often  conferences,  I  might  have  learned. 
Perhaps  he  meaneth  the  Pigmy  Pongo  killers  mentioned." 


I  THE  PONGO.  7 

It  does  not  appear  difficult  to  identify  the  exact 
region  of  which.  Battell  speaks.  Longo  is  doubt- 
less the  name  of  the  place  usually  spelled  Loango 
on  our  maps.  Mayombe  still  lies  some  nineteen 
leagues  northward  from  Loango,  along  the  coast; 
and  Cilongo  or  Kilonga,  Manikesocke,  and  Motim- 
bas  are  yet  registered  by  geographers.  The  Cape 
Negro  of  Battell,  however,  cannot  be  the  modern 
Cape  Negro  in  16°  S.,  since  Loango  itself  is  in 
4°  S.  latitude.  On  the  other  hand,  the  "  great 
river  called  Banna  "  corresponds  very  well  with  the 
"  Gamma  "  and  "  Fernand  Vas,"  of  modern  geog- 
raphers, which  form  a  great  delta  on  this  part  of 
the  African  coast. 

Now  this  "  Camma  "  country  is  situated  about 
a  degree  and  a  half  south  of  the  Equator,  while  a 
few  miles  to  the  north  of  the  line  lies  the  Gaboon, 
and  a  degree  or  so  north  of  that,  the  Money  River 
— both  well  known  to  modern  naturalists  as  lo- 
calities where  the  largest  of  man-like  Apes  has 
been  obtained.  Moreover,  at  the  present  day,  the 
word  Engeco,  or  N'schego,  is  applied  by  the  na- 
tives of  these  regions  to  the  smaller  of  the  two 
great  Apes  which  inhabit  them;  so  that  there  can 
be  no  rational  doubt  that  Andrew  Battell  spoke 
of  that  which  he  knew  of  his  own  knowledge,  or, 
at  any  rate,  by  immediate  report  from  the  natives 
of  Western  Africa.  The  "  Engeco,"  however,  is 
that  "  other  monster  "  whose  nature  Battell  "  for- 
got to  relate,"  while  the  name  "  Pongo  " — applied 


8  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  i 

to  the  animals  whose  characters  and  habits  are  so 
fully  and  carefully  described — seems  to  have  died 
out,  at  least  in  its  primitive  form  and  signification. 
Indeed,  there  is  evidence  that  not  only  in  Battell's 
time,  but  up  to  a  very  recent  date,  it  was  used  in 
a  totally  different  sense  from  that  in  which  he  em- 
ploys it. 

For  example,  the  second  chapter  of  Purchas' 
work,  which  I  have  just  quoted,  contains  "  A  De- 
scription and  Historicall  Declaration  of  the  Golden 
Kingdom  of  Guinea,  &c.  &c.  Translated  from  the 
Dutch,  and  compared  also  with  the  Latin,"  where- 
in it  is  stated  (p.  986)  that — 

"  The  River  Gaboon  lyeth  about  fifteen  miles  north- 
ward from  Rio  de  Angra,  and  eight  miles  northward  from 
Cape  de  Lope  Gonsalvez  (Cape  Lopez),  and  is  right  under 
the  Equinoctial  line,  about  fifteene  miles  from  St.  Thomas, 
and  is  a  great  land,  well  and  easily  to  be  knowne.  At 
the  mouth  of  the  river  there  lieth  a  sand,  three  or  foure 
fathoms  deepe,  whereon  it  beateth  mightily  with  the 
streame  which  runneth  out  of  the  river  into  the  sea.  This 
river,  in  the  mouth  thereof,  is  at  least  four  miles  broad; 
but  when  you  are  about  the  Hand  called  Pongo,  it  is  not 
above  two  miles  broad.  ...  On  both  sides  the  river  there 

standeth  many  trees The  Hand  called  Pongo, 

which  hath  a  monstrous  high  hill." 

The  French  naval  officers,  whose  letters  are  ap- 
pended to  the  late  M.  Isidore  Geoff.  Saint  Hilaire's 
excellent  essay  on  the  Gorilla,*  note  in  similar 
terms  the  width  of  the  Gaboon,  the  trees  that  line 

*  Archives  du  Museum,  Tome  X. 


I  THE  PONGO.  9 

its  banks  down  to  the  water's  edge,  and  the  strong 
current  that  sets  out  of  it.  They  describe  two 
islands  in  its  estuary; — one  low,  called  Perroquet; 
the  other  high,  presenting  three  conical  hills,  called 
Coniquet;  and  one  of  them,  M.  Franquet,  expressly 
states  that,  formerly,  the  Chief  of  Coniquet  was 
called  Meni-Pongo,  meaning  thereby  Lord  of 
Pongo;  and  that  the  N'Pongues  (as,  in  agreement 
with  Dr.  Savage,  he  affirms  the  natives  call  them- 
selves) term  the  estuary  of  the  Gaboon  itself 
N'Pongo. 

It  is  so  easy,  in  dealing  with  savages,  to  mis- 
understand their  applications  of  words  to  things, 
that  one  is  at  first  inclined  to  suspect  Battell  of 
having  confounded  the  name  of  this  region,  where 
his  "  greater  monster "  still  abounds,  with  the 
name  of  the  animal  itself.  But  he  is  so  right  about 
other  matters  (including  the  name  of  the  "  lesser 
monster")  that  one  is  loth  to  suspect  the  old 
traveller  of  error;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  shall 
find  that  a  voyager  of  a  hundred  years'  later  date 
speaks  of  the  name  "  Boggoe,"  as  applied  to  a 
great  Ape,  by  the  inhabitants  of  quite  another 
part  of  Africa — Sierra  Leone. 

But  I  must  leave  this  question  to  be  settled  by 
philologers  and  travellers;  and  I  should  hardly 
have  dwelt  so  long  upon  it  except  for  the  curious 
part  played  by  this  word  '  Pongo  '  in  the  later  his- 
tory of  the  man-like  Apes. 

The  generation  which  succeeded  Battell  saw 


10  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  i 

the  first  of  the  man-like  Apes  which  was  ever 
brought  to  Europe,  or,  at  any  rate,  whose  visit 
found  a  historian.  In  the  third  book  of  Tulpius' 
"  Observationes  Medicas,"  published  in  1641,  the 
56th  chapter  or  section  is  devoted  to  what  he  calls 
Satyrus  indicus,  "  called  by  the  Indians  Orang- 

Somo  S ylvefln's.  ^^ 
QremffOutang.     Jj/Bd^. 


Fig.  2.— The  Orang  of  Tulpius,  1641. 

autang  or  Man-of-the-Woods,  and  by  the  Africans 
Quoias  Morrou."  He  gives  a  very  good  figure,  evi- 
dently from  the  life,  of  the  specimen  of  this  ani- 
mal, "  nostra  memoria  ex  Angola  delatum,"  pre- 
sented to  Frederick  Henry  Prince  of  Orange.  Tul- 
pius says  it  was  as  big  as  a  child  of  three  years  old, 


I  TYSON'S  PYGMIE.  It 

and  as  stout  as  one  of  six  years:  and  that  its  back 
was  covered  with  black  hair.  It  is  plainly  a  young 
Chimpanzee. 

In  the  meanwhile,  the  existence  of  other,  Asi- 
atic, man-like  Apes  became  known,  but  at  first 
in  a  very  mythical  fashion.  Thus  Bontius  (1658) 
gives  an  altogether  fabulous  and  ridiculous  ac- 
count and  figure  of  an  animal  which  he  calls 
"  Orang-outang  ";  and  though  he  says  "  vidi  Ego 
cujus  effigiem  hie  exhibeo,"  the  said  effigies  (see 
Fig.  6  for  Hoppius'  copy  of  it)  is  nothing  but  a 
very  hairy  woman  of  rather  comely  aspect,  and 
with  proportions  and  feet  wholly  human.  The 
judicious  English  anatomist,  Tyson,  was  justified 
in  saying  of  this  description  by  Bontius,  "  I  confess 
I  do  mistrust  the  whole  representation." 

It  is  to  the  last-mentioned  writer,  and  his  coad- 
jutor Cowper,  that  we  owe  the  first  account  of  a 
man-like  ape  which  has  any  pretensions  to  scien- 
tific accuracy  and  completeness.  The  treatise  en- 
titled, "  Orang-ovtavfj,  sive  Homo  Sylvestris;  or 
the  Anatomy  of  a  Pygmie  compared  with  that  of  a 
Monkey,  an  Ape,  and  a  Man,"  published  by  the 
Royal  Society  in  1699,  is,  indeed,  a  work  of  re- 
markable merit,  and  has,  in  some  respects,  served 
as  a  model  to  subsequent  inqiiirers.  This  "  Pyg- 
mie," Tyson  tells  us  "was  brought  from  Angola,  in 
Africa;  but  was  first  taken  a  great  deal  higher  up 
the  country  ";  its  hair  "  was  of  a  coal-black  colour 
and  strait,"  and  "  when  it  went  as  a  quadruped 


12 


THE  MAN-LIKE  APES. 


on  all  four,  'twas  awkwardly;  not  placing  the  palm 
of  the  hand  flat  to  the  ground,  but  it  walk'd  upon 
its  knuckles,  as  I  observed  it  to  do  when  weak  and 
had  not  strength  enough  to  support  its  body," — 


Fig.  3. — The  "  Pvgmie  "  reduced  from  Tyson's  figure  1, 

1699. 

"  From  the  top  of  the  head  to  the  heel  of  the  foot, 

in  a  straight  line,  it  measured  twenty-six  inchee." 

These  characters,  even  without  Tyson's  good 

figure  (Figs.  3  and  4),  would  have  been  sufficient 


TYSON'S  PYGMIB. 


13 


to  prove  his  "  Pygmie  "  to  be  a  young  Chimpanzee. 
But  the  opportunity  of  examining  the  skeleton  of 
the  very  animal  Tyson  anatomised  having  most 
unexpectedly  presented  itself  to  me,  I  am  able  to 


Fig  4. — The  "  Pygmie  "  reduced  from  Tyson's  figure  2, 

1699. 

bear  independent  testimony  to  its  being  a  veri- 
table Troglodytes  niger*  though  still  very  young. 

*  I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  Wright,  of  Cheltenham,  whose 
paleontological  labours  are  so  well  known,  for  bringing 


14  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

Although  fully  appreciating  the  resemblances  be- 
tween his  Pygmie  and  Man,  Tyson  by  no  means 
overlooked  the  differences  between  the  two,  and 
he  concludes  his  memoir  by  summing  up  first,  the 
points  in  which  "  the  Ourang-outang  or  Pygmie 
more  resembled  a  Man  than  Apes  and  Monkeys 
do,"  under  forty-seven  distinct  heads;  and  then 
giving,  in  thirty-four  similar  brief  paragraphs,  the 
respects  in  which  "  the  Ourang-outang  or  Pygmie 
differ'd  from  a  man  and  resembled  more  the  Ape 
and  Monkey  kind." 

After  a  careful  survey  of  the  literature  of  the 
subject  extant  in  his  time,  our  author  arrives  at 
the  conclusion  that  his  "  Pygmie "  is  identical 
neither  with  the  Orangs  of  Tulpius  and  Bontius, 
nor  with  the  Quoias  Morrou  of  Dapper  (or  rather 
of  Tulpius),  the  Barris  of  d'Arcos,  nor  with  the 
Pongo  of  Battell;  but  that  it  is  a  species  of  ape 
probably  identical  with  the  Pygmies  of  the  An- 
cients, and,  says  Tyson,  though  it  "  does  so  much 
resemble  a  Man  in  many  of  its  parts,  more  than 
any  of  the  ape  kind,  or  any  other  animal  in  the 
world,  that  I  know  of:  yet  by  no  means  do  I  look 
upon  it  as  the  product  of  a  mixt  generation — 'tis  a 

this  interseting  relic  to  my  knowledge.  Tyson's  grand- 
daughter, it  appears,  married  Dr.  Allardyce,  a  physician 
of  repute  in  Cheltenham,  and  brought,  as  part  of  her 
dowry,  the  skeleton  of  the  "  Pygmie."  Dr.  Allardyce  pre- 
sented it  to  the  Cheltenham  Museum,  and,  through  the 
good  offices  of  my  friend  Dr.  Wright,  the  authorities  of 
the  Museum  have  permitted  me  to  borrow,  what  is,  per- 
haps, its  most  remarkable  ornament. 


1  THE  MAKDRILL.  15 

Brute-Animal  sui  generis,  and  a  particular  species 
of  Ape." 

The  name  of  "  Chimpanzee,"  by  which  one  of 
the  African  Apes  is  now  so  well  known,  appears 
to  have  come  into  use  in  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  but  the  only  important  addi- 
tion made,  in  that  period,  to  our  acquaintance  with 
the  man-like  apes  of  Africa  is  contained  in  "  A 
New  Voyage  to  Guinea,"  by  William  Smith,  which 
bears  the  date  1744. 

In  describing  the  animals  of  Sierra  Leone,  p. 
51,  this  writer  says: — 

"  I  shall  next  describe  a  strange  sort  of  animal,  called 
by  the  white  men  in  this  countiy  Mandrill,*  but  why  it 
is  so  called  I  know  not,  nor  did  I  ever  hear  the  name  be- 
fore, neither  can  those  who  call  them  so  tell,  except  it  be 
for  their  near  resemblance  of  a  human  creature,  thoush 
nothing  at  all  like  an  Ape.  Their  bodies,  when  full  grown, 
are  as  big  in  circumference  as  a  middle-sized  man's — 
their  legs  much  shorter,  and  their  feet  larger;  their  arms 
and  hands  in  proportion.  The  head  is  monstrously  big, 
and  the  face  broad  and  flat,  without  any  other  hair  but 


*  "  Mandrill  "  seems  to  signify  a  "  man-like  ape,"  the 
word  "  Drill  "  or  "  Dril  "  having  been  anciently  employed 
in  England  to  denote  an  Ape  or  Baboon.  Thus  in  the 
fifth  edition  of  Blount's  "  Glossofjraphia,  or  a  Dictionary 
interpreting  the  hard  words  of  whatsoever  language  now 
used  in  our  refined  English  tongue  .  .  .  very  useful  for  all 
such  as  desire  to  understand  what  they  read,"  published 
in  1681,  I  find,  "  Dril— a  stonecutter's  tool  wherewith  he 
bores  little  holes  in  marble,  &c.  Also  a  large  overgrown 
Ape  and  Baboon,  so  called."  "  Drill  "  is  used  in  the  same 
sense  in  Charleston's  Onomasticon  Zoicon,  1668.  The  sin- 
gular etymology  of  the  word  given  by  Buffon  seems  hardly 
a  probable  one. 


16 


THE  MAN-LIKE  APES. 


the  eyebrows;  the  nose  very  small,  the  mouth  wide,  and 
the  lips  thin.  The  face,  which  is  covered  by  a  white  skin, 
is  monstrously  ugly,  being  all  over  wrinkled  as  with  old 
age;  the  teeth  broad  and  yellow;  the  hands  have  no  more 
hair  than  the  face,  but  the  same  white  skin,  though  all 
the  rest  of  the  body  is  covered  with  long  black  hair,  like 
a  bear.  They  never  go  upon  all-fours,  like  apes;  but  cry, 
when  vexed  or  teased,  just  like  children 


Fig.  5. — Facsimile  of  William  Smith's  figure  of  the  "  Man- 
drill," 1744. 

"  When  I  was  at  Sherbro,  one  Mr.  Cummerbus,  whom 
I  shall  have  occasion  hereafter  to  mention,  made  me  a 
present  of  one  of  these  strange  animals,  which  are  called 
by  the  natives  Boggoe:  it  was  a  she-cub,  of  six  months' 
age,  but  even  then  larger  than  a  Baboon.  I  gave  it  in 
charge  to  one  of  the  slaves,  who  knew  how  to  feed  and 
mirse  it,  being  a  very  tender  sort  of  animal ;  but  when- 
ever I  went  off  the  deck  the  sailors  began  to  teaze  it — 


I  LINN^US  ANTHROPOMORPHA.  17 

some  loved  to  see  its  tears  and  hear  it  cry;  others  hated 
its  snotty  nose;  one  who  hurt  it,  being  checked  by  the 
negro  that  took  care  of  it,  told  the  slave  he  was  very  fond 
of  his  country-woman,  and  asked  him  if  he  should  not 
like  her  for  a  wife?  To  which  the  slave  very  readily  re- 
plied, '  No,  this  no  my  wife ;  this  a  white  woman — this 
fit  wife  for  you.'  This  unlucky  wit  of  the  negro's,  I  fancy, 
hastened  its  death,  for  next  morning  it  was  found  dead 
under  the  windlass." 

William  Smith's  "  Mandrill,"  or  "  Boggoe,"  as 
his  description  and  figure  testify,  was,  without 
doubt,  a  Chimpanzee. 

Linnaeus  knew  nothing,  of  his  own  observation, 
of  the  man-like  Apes  of  either  Africa  or  Asia,  but 
a  dissertation  by  his  pupil  Hoppius  in  the  "  Amoeni- 
tates  Academicae  "  (VI.  "  Anthropomorpha  ")  may 
be  regarded  as  embodying  his  views  respecting 
these  animals. 

The  dissertation  is  illustrated  by  a  plate,  of 
which  the  accompanying  woodcut,  Fig.  6,  is  a  re- 
duced copy.  The  figures  are  entitled  (from  left  to 
right)  1.  Troglodyta  Bontii;  2.  Lucifer  Aldro- 
vandi;  3.  Satyrus  Tulpii;  4.  Pygmceus  Edwardi. 
The  first  is  a  bad  copy  of  Bontius'  fictitious  "  Ou- 
rang-outang,"  in  whose  existence,  however,  Lin- 
nasus  appears  to  have  fully  believed;  for  in  the 
standard  edition  of  the  "  Systema  Naturae,"  it  is 
enumerated  as  a  second  species  of  Homo;  "  H. 
nocturnus."  Lucifer  Aldrovandi  is  a  copy  of  a 
figure  in  Aldrovandus,  "  De  Quadrupedibus  digi- 
tatis  viviparis,"  Lib.  2,  p.  249  (1645)  entitled 
166 


18 


THE  MAJi-l ilKKi  APES. 


"  Cercopithecus  formse  rarae  Barhilius  vocatus  et 
originem  a  china  ducebat."  Hoppius  is  of  opinion 
that  this  may  be  one  of  that  cat-tailed  people,  of 
whom  Nicolaus  Koping  affirms  that  they  eat  a 
boat's  crew,  "  gubernator  navis  "  and  all!  In  the 
"  Systema  Naturae "  Linnseus  calls  it  in  a  note 
Homo  caudatus,  and  seems  inclined  to  regard  it 
as  a  third  species  of  man.     According  to  Tem- 


FiG.  6. — The  Anthropomorpha  of  Linnaeus. 


minck,  Satyrus  Tulpii  is  a  copy  of  the  figure  of 
a  Chimpanzee  published  by  Scotin  in  1738,  which 
I  have  not  seen.  It  is  the  Satyrus  indicus  of  the 
"  Systema  Naturge,"  and  is  regarded  by  Linnaeus 
as  possibly  a  distinct  species  from  Satyrus  sylvestris. 
The  last,  named  Pygviaius  Edwardi,  is  copied  from 
the  figure  of  a  young  "  Man  of  the  Woods,"  or  true 
Orang-Utan,  given  in  Edwards'  "  Gleanings  of 
Natural  History"  (1758). 


X  BUFFON'S  JOCKO.  19 

Buffon  was  more  fortunate  than  his  great  rival. 
Not  only  had  he  the  rare  opportunity  of  examin- 
ing a  young  Chimpanzee  in  the  living  state,  but  he 
became  possessed  of  an  adult  Asiatic  man-like  Ape 
— the  first  and  the  last  adult  specimen  of  any  of 
these  animals  brought  to  Europe  for  many  years. 
With  the  valuable  assistance  of  Daubenton,  Buf 
fon  gave  an  excellent  description  of  this  creature, 
which,  from  its  singular  proportions,  he  termed 
the  long-armed  Ape,  or  Gibbon.  It  is  the  modern 
Hylobates  lar. 

Thus  when,  in  1766,  Buffon  wrote  the  four- 
teenth volume  of  his  great  work,  he  was  personally 
familiar  with  the  young  of  one  kind  of  African 
man-like  Ape,  and  with  the  adult  of  an  Asiatic 
species — while  the  Orang-Utan  and  the  IMandrill 
of  Smith  were  known  to  him  by  report.  Further- 
more, the  Abbe  Prevost  had  translated  a  good  deal 
of  Purchas'  "  Pilgrims  "  into  French,  in  his  ''  His- 
toire  generale  des  Voyages  "  (1748),  and  there  Buf- 
fon found  a  version  of  Andrew  Battell's  account 
of  the  Pongo  and  the  Engeco.  All  these  data  Buf- 
fon attempts  to  weld  together  into  harmony  in  this 
chapter  entitled  "  Les  Orang-outangs  ou  le  Pongo 
et  le  Jocko."  To  this  title  the  following  note  is 
appended: — 

"  Orang-outang  nom  de  cet  animal  aux  Indes  orien- 
tales:  Pongo  nom  de  cet  animal  k  Lowando  Province  de 
Congo. 

"  Jocko,  Enjocko,  nom  de  cet  animal  a  Congo  que  nous 
avons  adopts.    En  est  I'article  que  nous  avons  retranchS." 


30  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  i 

Thus  it  was  that  Andrew  Battell's  "  Engeco  " 
became  metamorphosed  into  "  Jocko,"  and,  in  the 
latter  shape,  was  spread  all  over  the  world,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  extensive  popularity  of  Buffon's 
works.  The  Abbe  Prevost  and  Buffon  between 
them  however,  did  a  good  deal  more  disfigurement 
to  Battell's  sober  account  than  "  cutting  off  an 
article."  Thus  Battell's  statement  that  the  Pon- 
gos  "  cannot  speake,  and  have  no  understanding 
more  than  a  beast,"  is  rendered  by  Buffon  "  qu'il 
ne  pent  parler  quoiqu'il  ait  plus  d'entendement  que 
les  autres  animaux;  "  and  again,  Purchas'  affirma- 
tion, "  He  told  me  in  conference  with  him,  that 
one  of  these  Pongos  tooke  a  negro  boy  of  his 
which  lived  a  moneth  with  them,"  stands  in  the 
French  version,  "  un  pongo  lui  enleva  un  petit 
negre  qui  passa  un  an  entier  dans  la  societe  de 
ces  animaux." 

After  quoting  the  account  of  the  great  Pongo, 
Buffon  justly  remarks,  that  all  the  "  Jockos  "  and 
"  Orangs  "  hitherto  brought  to  Europe  were  young; 
and  he  suggests  that,  in  their  adult  condition,  they 
might  be  as  big  as  the  Pongo  or  "  great  Orang; " 
so  that,  provisionally,  he  regarded  the  Jocko8, 
Orangs,  and  Pongos  as  all  of  one  species.  And 
perhaps  this  was  as  much  as  the  state  of  knowl- 
edge at  the  time  warranted.  But  how  it  came  about 
that  Buffon  failed  to  perceive  the  similarity  of 
Smith's  "Mandrill"  to  his  own  "Jocko,"  and 
confounded  the  former  with  so  totally  different  a 


I  BUFFON'S  JOCKO.  21 

creature  as  the  blue-faced  Baboon,  is  not  so  easily 
intelligible. 

Twenty  years  later  Buffon  changed  his  opin- 
ion,* and  expressed  his  belief  that  the  Orangs  con- 
stituted a  genus  with  two  species, — a  large  one, 
the  Pongoof  Battell,  and  a  small  one,  the  Jocko: 
that  the  small  one  (Jocko)  is  the  East  Indian 
Orang;  and  that  the  young  animals  from  Africa, 
observed  by  himself  and  Tulpius,  are  simply  young 
Pongos. 

In  the  meanwhile,  the  Dutch  naturalist,  Vos- 
maer,  gave,  in  1778,  a  very  good  account  and  figure 
of  a  young  Orang,  brought  alive  to  Holland,  and 
his  countryman,  the  famous  anatomist,  Peter  Cam- 
per, published  (1779)  an  essay  on  the  Orang-Utan 
of  similar  value  to  that  of  Tyson  on  the  Chim- 
panzee. He  dissected  several  females  and  a  male, 
all  of  which,  from  the  state  of  their  skeleton  and 
their  dentition,  he  justly  supposes  to  have  been 
young.  However,  judging  by  the  analogy  of  man, 
he  concludes  that  they  could  not  have  exceeded 
four  feet  in  height  in  the  adult  condition.  Fur- 
thermore, he  is  very  clear  as  to  the  specific  dis- 
tinctness of  the  true  East  Indian  Orang. 

"  The  Orang,"  says  he,  "  differs  not  only  from 
the  Pigmy  of  Tyson  and  from  the  Orang  of 
Tulpius  by  its  peculiar  colour  and  its  long  toes, 
but  also  by  its  whole  external  form.  Its  arms,  its 
hands,  and  its  feet  are  longer,  while  the  thumbs, 

•  Hi^toire  Naturelle,  Suppl.  Tome  76me,  1789. 


22  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  1 

on  the  contrary,  are  much,  shorter,  and  the  great 
toes  much  smaller  in  proportion."  *  And  again, 
"  The  true  Orang,  that  is  to  say,  that  of  Asia,  that 
of  Borneo,  is  consequently  not  the  Pithecus,  or 
tail-less  Ape,  which  the  Greeks,  and  especially 
Galen,  have  described.  It  is  neither  the  Pongo 
nor  the  Jocko,  nor  the  Orang  of  Tulpius,  nor  the 
Pigmy  of  Tyson, — it  is  an  animal  of  a  peculiar 
species,  as  I  shall  prove  in  the  clearest  manner  by 
the  organs  of  voice  and  the  skeleton  in  the  follow- 
ing chapters  "  (I.  c.  p.  64). 

A  few  years  later,  M.  Radermacher,  who  held 
a  high  office  in  the  Government  of  the  Dutch 
dominions  in  India,  and  was  an  active  member 
of  the  Batavian  Society  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  pub- 
lished, in  the  second  part  of  the  Transactions  of 
that  Society,!  a  Description  of  the  Island  of 
Borneo,  which  was  written  between  the  years  1779 
and  1781,  and,  among  much  other  interesting 
matter,  contains  some  notes  upon  the  Orang. 
The  small  sort  of  Orang-Utan,  viz.  that  of  Vos- 
maer  and  of  Edwards,  he  says,  is  found  only  in 
Borneo,  and  chiefly  about  Banjermassing,  Mam- 
pauwa,  and  Landak.  Of  these  he  had  seen  some 
fifty  during  his  residence  in  the  Indies;  but  none 
exceeded  2^  feet  in  length.  The  larger  sort,  often 
regarded  as  a  chimaera,  continues  Radermacher, 
would  perhaps  long  have  remained  so,  had  it  not 

*  Camper,  (Euvres,  i.,  p.  56. 

t  TerhandeUngen   van  het   Bataviaasck   Genootschap. 
Tweede  Deel.     Derde  Uruk.     1826. 


I  THE  ORANG-OUTANG.  23 

been  for  the  exertions  of  the  Resident  at  Rembang, 
M.  Palm,  who,  on  returning  from  Landak  towards 
Pontiana,  shot  one,  and  forwarded  it  to  Batavia  in 
spirit,  for  transmission  to  Europe. 

Palm's  letter  describing  the  capture  runs  thus: 
— "Herewith  I  send  your  Excellency,  contrary 
to  all  expectation  (since  long  ago  I  offered  more 
than  a  hundred  ducats  to  the  natives  for  an  Orang- 
utan of  four  or  five  feet  high)  an  Orang  which  I 
heard  of  this  morning  about  eight  o'clock.  For  a 
long  time  we  did  our  best  to  take  the  frightful 
beast  alive  in  the  dense  forest  about  half  way  to 
Landak.  We  forgot  even  to  eat,  so  anxious  were 
we  not  to  let  him  escape;  but  it  was  necessary  to 
take  care  that  he  did  not  revenge  himself,  as  he 
kept  continually  breaking  off  heavy  pieces  of  wood 
and  green  branches,  and  dashing  them  at  us.  This 
game  lasted  till  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  when 
we  determined  to  shoot  him;  in  which  I  succeeded 
very  well,  and  indeed  better  than  I  ever  shot  from  a 
boat  before;  for  the  bullet  went  just  into  the  side 
of  his  chest,  so  that  he  was  not  much  damaged.  We 
got  him  into  the  prow  still  living,  and  bound  him 
fast,  and  next  morning  he  died  of  his  wounds.  All 
Pantiana  came  on  board  to  see  him  when  we  ar- 
rived." Palm  gives  his  height  from  the  head  to 
the  heel  as  49  inches. 

A  very  intelligent  German  officer,  Baron  Yon 
Wurmb,  who  at  this  time  held  a  post  in  the  Dutch 
East  India  service,  and  was  Secretary  of  the  Bata- 


24  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  1 

vian  Society,  studied  this  animal,  and  his  careful 
description  of  it,  entitled  "  Besehrijving  van  der 
Groote  Borneosche  Orang-outang  of  de  Oost-In- 
dische  Pongo,"  is  contained  in  the  same  volume  of 
the  Batavian  Society's  Transactions.  After  Von 
Wurmb  had  drawn  up  his  description  he  states, 
in  a  letter  dated  Batavia,  Feb.  18,  1781,*  that  the 
specimen  was  sent  to  Europe  in  brandy  to  be  placed 
in  the  collection  of  the  Prince  of  Orange;  "  un- 
fortunately," he  continues,  "  we  hear  that  the  ship 
has  been  wrecked."''  Von  Wurmb  died  in  the 
course  of  the  year  1781,  the  letter  in  which  this 
passage  occurs  being  the  last  he  wrote;  but  in  his 
posthumous  papers,  published  in  the  fourth  part 
of  the  Transactions  of  the  Batavian  Society,  there 
is  a  brief  description,  with  measurements,  of  a  fe- 
male Pongo  four  feet  high. 

Did  either  of  these  original  specimens,  on 
which  Von  Wurmb's  descriptions  are  based,  ever 
reach  Europe?  It  is  commonly  supposed  that  they 
did;  but  I  doubt  the  fact.  For,  appended  to  the 
memoir  "  De  I'Ourang-outang,"  in  the  collected 
edition  of  Camper's  works,  tome  i.,  pp.  64—66,  is  a 
note  by  Camper  himself,  referring  to  Von  Wurmb's 
papers,  and  continuing  thus: — "  Heretofore,  this 
kind  of  ape  had  never  been  known  in  Europe. 
Radermacher  has  had  the  kindness  to  send  me  the 
skull   of   one   of  these   animals,   which   meafiiued 

*  "  Briefe  des  Herm  v.  Wurmb  und  des  H.  Baron  von 
WoUzogen.    Gotha,  1794." 


I  THE  ORANG-OUTANa.  25 

fifty-three  inches,  or  four  feet  five  inches,  in 
height.  I  have  sent  some  sketches  of  it  to  M.  Soem- 
mering at  Mayence,  which  are  better  calculated, 
however,  to  give  an  idea  of  the  form  than  of  the 
real  size  of  the  parts." 

These  sketches  have  been  reproduced  by  Fischer 
and  by  Lucse,  and  bear  date  1783,  Soemmering 


Fig.  7. — The  Pongo  Skull,  sent  by  Radermacher  to 
Camper,  after  Camper's  original  sketches,  as  reproduced 
by  Lucae. 

having  received  them  in  1784.  Had  either  of  Von 
Wurmb's  specimens  reached  Holland,  they  would 
hardly  have  been  unknown  at  this  time  to  Camper, 
who,  however,  goes  on  to  say: — "  It  appears  that 
since  this,  some  more  of  these  monsters  have  been 
captured,  for  an  entire  skeleton,  very  badly  set 
up,  which  had  been  sent  to  the  Museum  of  the 


26  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  1 

Prince  of  Orange,  and  which  I  saw  only  on  the 
27th  of  June,  1784,  was  more  than  four  feet  high. 
I  examined  this  skeleton  again  on  the  19th  De- 
cember, 1785,  after  it  had  been  excellently  put  to 
rights  by  the  ingenious  Onymus." 

It  appears  evident,  then,  that  this  skeleton, 
which  is  doubtless  that  which  has  always  gone  by 
the  name  of  Wurmb's  Pongo,  is  not  that  of  the 
animal  described  by  him,  though  unquestionably 
similar  in  all  essential  points. 

Camper  proceeds  to  note  some  of  the  most  im- 
portant features  of  this  skeleton;  promises  to  de- 
scribe it  in  detail  by-and-bye;  and  is  evidently  in 
doubt  as  to  the  relation  of  this  great  "  Pongo  "  to 
his  "  petit  Orang." 

The  promised  further  investigations  were  never 
carried  out;  and  so  it  happened  that  the  Pongo  of 
Von  Wurmb  took  its  place  by  the  side  of  the  Chim- 
panzee, Gibbon,  and  Orang  as  a  fourth  and  colossal 
species  of  man-like  Ape.  And  indeed  nothing 
could  look  much  less  like  the  Chimpanzees  or  the 
Orangs,  then  known,  than  the  Pongo;  for  all  the 
specimens  of  Chimpanzee  and  Orang  which  had 
been  observed  were  small  of  stature,  singularly 
human  in  aspect,  gentle  and  docile;  while  Wurmb's 
Pongo  was  a  monster  almost  twice  their  size,  of 
vast  strength  and  fierceness,  and  very  brutal  in 
expression;  its  great  projecting  muzzle,  armed  with 
strong  teeth,  being  further  disfigured  by  the  out- 
growth of  the  cheeks  into  fleshy  lobes. 


I  THE  ORANG-OUTANa.  27 

Eventually,  in  accordance  with  the  usual  ma- 
rauding habits  of  the  Eevolutionary  armies,  the 
"  Pongo "  skeleton  was  carried  away  from  Hol- 
land into  France,  and  notices  of  it,  expressly 
intended  to  demonstrate  its  entire  distinctness 
from  the  Orang  and  its  affinity  with  the  baboons, 
were  given,  in  1798,  by  Geoff roy  St.  Hilaire  and 
Cuvier. 

Even  in  Cuvier's  "  Tableau  Elementaire,"  and 
in  the  first  edition  of  his  great  work,  the  "  Kegne 
Animal,"  the  "  Pongo  "  is  classed  as  a  species  of 
Baboon.  However,  so  early  as  1818,  it  appears  that 
Cuvier  saw  reason  to  alter  this  opinion,  and  to 
adopt  the  view  suggested  several  years  before  by 
Blumenbach,*  and  after  him  by  Tilesius,  that  the 
Bornean  Pongo  is  simply  an  adult  Orang.  In  1824, 
Kudolphi  demonstrated,  by  the  condition  of  the 
dentition,  more  fully  and  completely  than  had  been 
done  by  his  predecessors,  that  the  Orangs  described 
up  to  that  time  were  all  young  animals,  and  that 
the  skull  and  teeth  of  the  adult  would  probably  be 
such  as  those  seen  in  the  Pongo  of  Wurmb.  In 
the  second  edition  of  the  "  Regne  Animal  "  (1829), 
Cuvier  infers,  from  the  "  proportions  of  all  the 
parts "  and  "  the  arrangements  of  the  foramina 
and  sutures  of  the  head,"  that  the  Pongo  is  the 
adult  of  the  Orang-TJtan,  "  at  least  of  a  very  close- 

*  See  Blumenbach  AbbUdnngen  Nnturhistorichen  Oe- 
genstande,  No.  12,  1810;  and  Tilesius,  Naturhifitoriche 
Friiehte  der  ersten  Kaiserlich-Russischen  Erdumsegelung, 
p.  115,  1813. 


28  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

ly  allied  species,"  and  this  conclusion  was  eventu- 
ally placed  beyond  all  doubt  by  Professor  Owen's 
Memoir  published  in  the  "  Zoological  Transac- 
tions "  for  1835,  and  by  Teniminck  in  his  "  Mono- 
graphies  de  Mammalogie."  Temminck's  memoir  is 
remarkable  for  the  completeness  of  the  evidence 
which  it  affords  as  to  the  modification  which  the 
form  of  the  Orang  undergoes  according  to  age 
and  sex.  Tiedemann  first  published  an  account 
of  the  brain  of  the  young  Orang,  while  Sandifort, 
Miiller  and  Schlegei,  described  the  muscles  and 
the  viscera  of  the  adult,  and  gave  the  earliest  de- 
tailed and  trustworthy  history  of  the  habits  of 
the  great  Indian  Ape  in  a  state  of  rature;  and 
as  important  additions  have  been  made  by  later 
observers,  we  are  at  this  moment  better  ac- 
quainted with  the  adult  of  the  Orang-Utan,  than 
with  that  of  any  of  the  other  greater  man-like 
Apes. 

It  is  certainly  the  Pongo  of  Wurmb;  *  and  it  is 
as  certainly  not  the  Pongo  of  Battell,  seeing  that 
the  Orang-Utan  is  entirely  confined  to  the  great 
Asiatic  islands  of  Borneo  and  Sumatra. 

And  while  the  progress  of  discovery  thus 
cleared  up  the  history  of  the  Orang,  it  also  became 
established  that  the  only  other  man-like  Apes  in 
the  eastern  world  were  the  various  species  of  Gib- 
bon— Apes  of  smaller  stature,  and  therefore  at- 

•  Speaking  broadly  and  without  prejudice  to  the  ques- 
tion, whether  there  be  more  than  one  species  of  Orang. 


I  THE  CHIMPANZEE.  29 

tracting  less  attention  than  the  Orangs,  though 
they  are  spread  over  a  much  wider  range  of 
country,  and  are  hence  more  accessible  to  observa- 
tion. 

Although  the  geographical  area  inhabited  by 
the  "  Pongo  "  and  "  Engeco  "  of  Battell  is  so  much 
nearer  to  Europe  than  that  in  which  the  Orang 
and  Gibbon  are  found,  our  acquaintance  with  the 
African  Apes  has  been  of  slower  growth;  indeed, 
it  is  only  within  the  last  few  years  that  the  truth- 
ful story  of  the  old  English  adventurer  has  been 
rendered  fully  intelligible.  It  was  not  until  1835 
that  the  skeleton  of  the  adult  Chimpanzee  became 
known,  by  the  publica^'on  of  Professor  Owen's 
above-mentioned  very  excellent  memoir  "  On  the 
Osteology  of  the  Chimpanzee  and  Orang,"  in  the 
Zoological  Transactions — a  memoir  which,  by  the 
accuracy  of  its  descriptions,  the  carefulness  of  its 
comparisons,  and  the  excellence  of  its  figures,  made 
an  epoch  in  the  history  of  our  knowledge  of  the 
bony  framework,  not  only  of  the  Chimpanzee,  but 
of  all  the  anthropoid  Apes. 

By  the  investigations  herein  detailed,  it  became 
evident  that  the  old  Chimpanzee  acquired  a  size 
and  aspect  as  different  from  those  of  the  young 
known  to  Tyson,  to  Buffon,  and  to  Traill,  as  those 
of  the  old  Orang  from  the  young  Orang;  and  the 
subsequent  very  important  researches  of  Messrs. 
Savage  and  Wyman,  the  American  missionary  and 


30  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

anatomist,  have  not  only  confirmed  this  conclu- 
sion, but  have  added  many  new  details.* 

One  of  the  most  interesting  among  the  many 
valuable  discoveries  made  by  Dr.  Thomas  Savage 
is  the  fact,  that  the  natives  in  the  Gaboon  country 
at  the  present  day,  apply  to  the  Chimpanzee  a 
name — "  Enche-eko  " — which  is  obviously  identi- 
cal with  the  "Engeko"  of  Battell;  a  discovery 
which  has  been  confirmed  by  all  later  inquirers. 
Battell's  "  lesser  monster "  being  thus  proved  to 
be  a  veritable  existence,  of  course  a  strong  pre- 
sumption arose  that  his  "  greater  monster,"  the 
"  Ponofo,"   would   sooner   or   later   be   discovered. 
And,  indeed,  a  modern  traveller,  Bowdich,  had,  in 
1819,  found  strong  evic'ence,  among  the  natives, 
of  the  existence  of  a  seconJl  great  Ape,  called  the 
"  Ingena,"  "  five  feet  high,  and  four  across  the 
shoulders,"  the  builder  of  a  rude  house,  on  the 
outside  of  which  it  slept. 

In  1847,  Dr.  Savage  had  the  good  fortune  to 
make  another  and  most  important  addition  to  ouX 
knowledge  of  the  man-like  Apes;  for,  being  un- 
expectedly detained  at  the  Gaboon  river,  he  saw  in 
the  house  of  the  Kev.  Mr.  Wilson,  a  missionary 
resident  there,  "  a  skull  represented  by  the  natives 
to  be  a  monkey-like  animal,  remarkable  for  its 

*  See  "  Observations  on  the  external  characters  and  hab- 
its of  the  Troglodytes  niger,  by  Thomas  N.  Savage,  M.  D., 
and  on  its  organization,  by  Jetfries  Wyman,  M.  D.,"  Bos- 
ton Journal  of  Xatvral  History,  vol.  iv.  1843-4;  and 
"External  characters,  habits,  and  osteology  of  Troglo- 
dytes Gorilla,"  by  the  same  authors,  ibid.  vol.  v.  1847. 


1  THE  GORILLA.  31 

size,  ferocity,  and  habits."  From  the  contour  of  the 
skull,  and  the  information  derived  from  several 
intelligent  natives,  "  I  was  induced,"  says  Dr.  Sav- 
age (using  the  term  Orang  in  its  old  general  sense) 
"to  believe -that  it  belonged  to  a  new  species  of 
Orang.  I  expressed  this  opinion  to  Mr.  Wilson,  with 
a  desire  for  further  investigation;  and,  if  possible, 
to  decide  the  point  by  the  inspection  of  a  specimen 
alive  or  dead."  The  result  of  the  combined  exer- 
tions of  Messrs.  Savage  and  Wilson  was  not  only 
the  obtaining  of  a  verv  full  account  of  the  habits 
of  this  new  creature,  but  a  still  more  important 
service  to  science,  the  enabling  the  excellent 
American  anatomist  already  mentioned.  Professor 
Wyman,  to  describe,  from  ample  materials,  the 
distinctive  osteological  characters  of  the  new  form. 
This  animal  was  called  bv  the  natives  of  the  Gaboon 
"  Enge-ena,"  a  name  obviously  identical  with  the 
"  Ingena  "  of  Bowdich;  and  Dr.  Savage  arrived  at 
the  conviction  that  this  last  discovered  of  all  the 
great  Apes  was  the  long-sought  "  Pongo  "  of  Bat- 
tell. 

The  justice  of  this  conclusion,  indeed,  is  beyond 
doubt — for  not  only  does  the  "  Enge-ena  "  agree 
with  Battell's  "  greater  monster "  in  its  hollow 
eyes,  its  great  stature,  and  its  dun  or  iron-grey 
colour,  but  the  only  other  man-like  Ape  which 
inhabits  these  latitudes — the  Chimpanzee — is  at 
once  identified,  by  its  smaller  size,  as  the  "  lesser 
monster,"  and  is  excluded  from  any  possibility  of 


32  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

being  the  "  Pongo,"  by  the  fact  that  it  is  black 
and  not  dun,  to  say  nothing  of  the  important  cir- 
cumstance already  mentioned  that  it  still  retains 
the  name  of  "  Engeko,"  or  "  Enche-eko,"  by  which 
Battell  knew  it. 

In  seeking  for  a  specific  name  for  the  "  Enge- 
ena,"  however,  Dr.  Savage  wisely  avoided  the 
much  misused  "Pongo";  but  finding  in  the 
ancient  Periplus  of  Hanno  the  word  "  Gorilla " 
applied  to  certain  hairy  savage  people,  discovered 
by  the  Carthaginian  voyager  in  an  island  on  the 
African  coast,  he  attached  the  specific  name 
"  Gorilla  "  to  his  new  ape,  whence  arises  its  pres- 
ent well-known  appellation.  But  Dr.  Savage,  more 
cautious  than  some  of  his  successors,  by  no  means 
identifies  his  ape  with  Hanno's  "  wild  men."  He 
merely  says  that  the  latter  were  "  probably  one  of 
the  species  of  the  Orang;  "  and  I  quite  agree  with 
M.  Brulle,  that  there  is  no  ground  for  identifying 
the  modern  "  Gorilla  "  with  that  of  the  Carthagin- 
ian admiral. 

Since  the  memoir  of  Savage  and  Wyman  was 
published,  the  skeleton  of  the  Gorilla  has  been 
investigated  by  Professor  Owen  and  by  the  late 
Professor  Duvernoy,  of  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  the 
latter  having  further  supplied  a  valuable  account 
of  the  muscular  system  and  of  many  of  the  other 
soft  parts;  while  African  missionaries  and  travellers 
have  confirmed  and  expanded  the  account  origi- 
nally given  of  the  habits  of  this  great  man-like 


I  THE  GIBBONS.  33 

Ape,  which  has  had  the  singular  fortune  of  being 
the  first  to  be  made  known  to  the  general  world 
and  the  last  to  be  scientifically  investigated. 

Two  centuries  and  a  half  have  passed  away 
since  Battell  told  his  stories  about  the  "  greater  " 
and  the  "  lesser  monsters  "  to  Purchas,  and  it  has 
taken  nearly  that  time  to  arrive  at  the  clear  re- 
sult that  there  are  four  distinct  kinds  of  Anthro- 
poids— in  Eastern  Asia,  the  Gibbons  and  the 
Orangs;  in  Western  Africa,  the  Chimpanzees  and 
the  Gorilla. 

The  man-like  Apes,  the  history  of  the  discovery 
of  which  has  just  been  detailed,  have  certain  char- 
acters of  structure  and  of  distribution  in  common. 
Thus  they  all  have  the  same  number  of  teeth  as 
man — possessing  four  incisors,  two  canines,  four 
false  molars,  and  six  true  molars  in  each  jaw,  or 
32  teeth  in  all,  in  the  adult  condition;  while  the 
milk  dentition  consists  of  20  teeth — or  four  in- 
cisors, two  canines,  and  four  molars  in  each  jaw. 
They  are  what  are  called  catarrhine  Apes — that  is, 
their  nostrils  have  a  narrow  partition  and  look 
downwards;  and,  furthermore,  their  arms  are  al- 
ways longer  than  their  legs,  the  difference  being 
sometimes  greater  and  sometimes  less;  so  that  if 
the  four  were  arranged  in  the  order  of  the  length 
of  their  arms  in  proportion  to  that  of  their  legs, 
we  should  have  this  series — Orang  (1^ — 1),  Gibbon 
(1^—1),  Gorilla  (1^—1),  Chimpanzee  (l-^^r-l), 
167 


34  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  1 

In  all,  the  fore  limbs  are  terminated  by  hands, 
provided  with  longer  or  shorter  thumbs;  while 
the  great  toe  of  the  foot,  always  smaller  than  in 
Man,  is  far  more  movable  than  in  him  and  can  be 
opposed,  like  a  thumb,  to  the  rest  of  the  foot. 
None  of  these  apes  have  tails,  and  none  of  them 
possess  the  cheek-pouches  common  among  mon- 
keys. Finally,  they  are  all  inhabitants  of  the  old 
world. 

The  Gibbons  are  the  smallest,  slenderest,  and 
longest-limbed  of  the  man-like  Apes:  their  arms 
are  longer  in  proportion  to  their  bodies  than  those 
of  any  of  the  other  man-like  Apes,  so  that  they 
can  touch  the  ground  when  erect;  their  hands  are 
longer  than  their  feet,  and  they  are  the  only  An- 
thropoids which  possess  callosities  like  the  lower 
monkeys.  They  are  variously  coloured.  The 
Orangs  have  arms  which  reach  to  the  ankles  in 
the  erect  position  of  the  animal;  their  thumbs  and 
great  toes  are  very  short,  and  their  feet  are  longer 
than  their  hands.  They  are  covered  with  reddish 
brown  hair,  and  the  sides  of  the  face,  in  adult 
males,  are  commonly  produced  into  two  crescentic, 
flexible  excrescences,  like  fatty  tumours.  The 
Chimpanzees  have  arms  which  reach  below  the 
knees;  they  have  large  thumbs  and  great  toes; 
their  hands  are  longer  than  their  feet;  and  their 
hair  is  black,  while  the  skin  of  the  face  is  pale. 
The  Gorilla,  lastly,  has  arms  which  reach  to  the 
middle  of  the  leg,  large  thumbs  and  great  toes. 


t  THE  GIBBONS.  35 

feet  longer  than  the  hands,  a  black  face,  and  dark- 
grey  or  dun  hair. 

For  the  purpose  which  I  have  at  present  in 
view,  it  is  unnecessary  that  I  should  enter  into  any 
further  minutiae  respecting  the  distinctive  char- 
acters of  the  genera  and  species  into  which  these 
man-like  Apes  are  divided  by  naturalists.  Suf- 
fice it  to  say,  that  the  Orangs  and  the  Gibbons  con- 
stitute the  distinct  genera,  Simia  and  Hylohates; 
while  the  Chimpanzees  and  Gorillas  are  by  some 
regarded  simply  as  distinct  species  of  one  genus. 
Troglodytes;  by  others  as  distinct  genera — Trog- 
lodytes being  reserved  for  the  Chimpanzees,  and 
Gorilla  for  the  Enge-ena  or  Pongo. 

Sound  knowledge  respecting  the  habits  and 
mode  of  life  of  the  man-like  Apes  has  been  even 
more  difficult  of  attainment  than  correct  informa- 
tion regarding  their  structure. 

Once  in  a  generation,  a  Wallace  may  be  found 
physically,  mentally,  and  morally  qualified  to 
wander  unscathed  through  the  tropical  wilds  of 
America  and  of  Asia;  to  form  magnificent  collec- 
tions as  he  wanders;  and  withal  to  think  out  saga- 
ciously the  conclusions  suggested  by  his  collections: 
but,  to  the  ordinary  explorer  or  collector,  the  dense 
forests  of  equatorial  Asia  and  Africa,  which  con- 
stitute the  favourite  habitation  of  the  Orang,  the 
Chimpanzee,  and  the  Gorilla,  present  difficulties 
of  no  ordinary  magnitude;  and  the  man  who  risks 


36  THE  MAN-LIKE   APES.  1 

his  life  by  even  a  short  visit  to  the  malarious  shores 
of  those  regions  may  well  be  excused  if  he  shrinks 
from  facing  the  dangers  of  the  interior;  if  he  con- 
tents himself  with  stimulating  the  industry  of  the 
better  seasoned  natives,  and  collecting  and  collat- 
ing the  more  or  less  mythical  reports  and  traditions 
with  which  they  are  too  ready  to  supply  him. 

In  such  a  manner  most  of  the  earlier  accounts 
of  the  habits  of  the  man-like  Apes  originated; 
and  even  now  a  good  deal  of  what  passes  current 
must  be  admitted  to  have  no  very  safe  foundation. 
The  best  information  we  possess  is  that,  based 
almost  wholly  on  direct  European  testimony,  re- 
specting the  Gibbons;  the  next  best  evidence  re- 
lates to  the  Orangs;  while  our  knowledge  of  the 
habits  of  the  Chimpanzee  and  the  Gorilla  stands 
much  in  need  of  support  and  enlargement  by  ad- 
ditional testimony  from  instructed  European  eye- 
witnesses. 

It  will  therefore  be  convenient  in  endeavour- 
ing to  form  a  notion  of  what  we  are  justified  in 
believing  about  these  animals,  to  commence  with 
the  best  known  man-like  Apes,  the  Gibbons  and 
Orangs;  and  to  make  use  of  the  perfectly  trust- 
worthy information  respecting  them  as  a  sort  of 
criterion  of  the  probable  truth  or  falsehood  of 
assertions  respecting  the  others. 

Of  the  Gibbons,  half  a  dozen  species  are  found 
scattered  over  the  Asiatic  islands,  Java,  Sumatra, 
Borneo,   and   through   Malacca,    Siam,   Arracan, 


I  THE  GIBBONS.  37 

and  an  uncertain  extent  of  Hindostan,  on  the 
main  land  of  Asia.  The  largest  attain  a  few  inches 
above  three  feet  in  height,  from  the  crown  to  the 
heel,  so  that  they  are  shorter  than  the  other  man- 
like Apes;  while  the  slenderness  of  their  bodies 
renders  their  mass  far  smaller  in  proportion  even 
to  this  diminished  height. 

Dr.  Salomon  Miiller,  an  accomplished  Dutch 
naturalist,  who  lived  for  many  years  in  the  East- 
ern Archipelago,  and  to  the  results  of  whose  per- 
sonal experience  I  shall  frequently  have  occasion 
to  refer,  states  that  the  Gibbons  are  true  moun- 
taineers, loving  the  slopes  and  edges  of  the  hills, 
though  they  rarely  ascend  beyond  the  limit  of  the 
fig-trees.  All  day  long  they  haunt  the  tops  of  the 
tall  trees;  and  though,  towards  evening,  they 
descend  in  small  troops  to  the  open  ground, 
no  sooner  do  they  spy  a  man  than  they  dart 
up  the  hill-sides,  and  disappear  in  the  darker 
valleys. 

All  observers  testify  to  the  prodigious  volume 
of  voice  possessed  by  these  animals.  According 
to  the  writer  whom  I  have  just  cited,  in  one  of 
them,  the  Siamang,  "  the  voice  is  grave  and  pene- 
trating, resembling  the  sounds  goek,  goek,  gSek, 
goek,  goek  ha  ha  ha  ha  haaaaa,  and  may  easily  be 
heard  at  a  distance  of  half  a  league."  While  the 
cry  is  being  uttered,  the  great  membranous  bag 
under  the  throat  which  communicates  with  the 
organ  of  voice,  the  so-called  "  laryngeal  sac,"  be- 


r-^^..U«?^ 


Fig.  8.— a  Gibbon  {U.  pileatm),  after  Wolf. 


I  THE  GIBBONS.  39 

comes  greatly  distended,  diminishing  again  when 
the  creature  relapses  into  silence. 

M.  Duvaucel,  likewise,  affirms  that  the  cry  of 
the  Siamang  may  be  heard  for  miles — making  the 
woods  ring  again.  So  Mr.  Martin  *  describes  the 
cry  of  the  agile  Gibbon  as  "  overpowering  and 
deafening"  in  a  room,  and  "from  its  strength, 
well  calculated  for  resounding  through  the  vast 
forests."  Mr.  Waterhouse,  an  accomplished  mu- 
sician as  well  as  zoologist,  says,  "  The  Gibbon's 
voice  is  certainly  much  more  powerful  than  that 
of  any  singer  I  ever  heard."  And  yet  it  is  to  be 
recollected  that  this  animal  is  not  half  the  height 
of,  and  far  less  bulky  in  proportion  than,  a  man. 

There  is  good  testimony  that  various  species 
of  Gibbon  readily  take  to  the  erect  posture.  Mr. 
George  Bennett,  f  a  very  excellent  observer,  in  de- 
scribing the  habits  of  a  male  Hylobates  syndadylus 
which  remained  for  some  time  in  his  possession, 
says:  "  He  invariably  walks  in  the  erect  posture 
when  on  a  level  surface;  and  then  the  arms  eitlier 
hang  down,  enabling  him  to  assist  himself  with  his 
knuckles;  or  what  is  more  usual,  he  keeps  his  arms 
uplifted  in  nearly  an  erect  position,  with  the  hands 
pendent  ready  to  seize  a  rope,  and  climb  up  on 
the  approach  of  danger  or  on  the  obtrusion  of 
strangers.  He  walks  rather  quick  in  the  erect 
posture,  but  with  a  waddling  gait,  and  is  soon  run 

*  Man  and  Monkicfi,  p.  423. 

t  Wanderings  in  New  South  Wales,  vol.  ii.  chap.  viii. 
1834. 


40  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

down  if,  whilst  pursued,  he  has  no  opportunity  of 
escaping  by  climbing.  .  .  .  When  he  walks  in  the 
erect  posture  he  turns  the  leg  and  foot  outwards, 
which  occasions  him  to  have  a  waddling  gait  and 
to  seem  bow-legged." 

Dr.  Burrough  states  of  another  Gibbon,  the 
Horlack  or  Hooluk: 

"  They  walk  erect ;  and  when  placed  on  the  floor,  or  in 
an  open  field,  balance  themselves  veiy  prettily,  by  rais- 
ing their  hands  over  their  head  and  slightly  bending  the 
arm  at  the  wrist  and  elbow,  and  then  run  tolerably  fast, 
rocking  from  side  to  side;  and,  if  urged  to  greater  speed, 
they  let  fall  their  hands  to  the  ground,  and  assist  them- 
selves forward,  rather  jumping  than  running,  still  keep- 
ing the  body,  however,  nearly  erect." 

Somewhat  different  evidence,  however,  is  given 
by  Dr.  Winslow  Lewis:  * 

"  Their  only  manner  of  walking  was  on  their 
posterior  or  inferior  extremities,  the  others  being 
raised  upwards  to  preserve  their  equilibrium,  as 
rope-dancers  are  assisted  by  long  poles  at  fairs. 
Their  progression  was  not  by  placing  one  foot  be- 
fore the  other,  but  by  simultaneously  using  both, 
as  in  jumping."  Dr.  Salomon  Miiller  also  states 
that  the  Gibbons  progress  along  the  ground  by 
short  series  of  tottering  jumps,  effected  only  by 
the  hind  limbs,  the  body  being  held  altogether 
upright. 

But  Mr.  Martin  (?.  c.  p.  418),  who  also  speaks 

•  Boston  Journal  of  Natural  History,  vol.  i.  1834. 


1  THE  GIBBONS.  41 

from    direct    observation,    says    of    the    Gibbons 
generally: 

"  Pre-eminently  qualified  for  arboreal  habits,  and  dis- 
playing among  the  branches  amazing  activity,  the  Gib- 
bons are  not  so  awkward  or  embarrassed  on  a  level  sur- 
face as  might  be  imagined.  They  walk  erect,  with  a 
waddling  or  unsteady  gait,  but  at  a  quick  pace;  the 
equilibrium  of  the  body  requiring  to  be  kept  up,  either  by 
touching  the  ground  with  the  knuckles,  first  on  one  side 
then  on  the  other,  or  by  uplifting  the  arms  so  as  to  poise 
it.  As  with  the  Chimpanzee,  the  whole  of  the  narrow, 
long  sole  of  the  foot  is  placed  upon  the  ground  at  once  and 
raised  at  once,  without  any  elasticity  of  step." 

After  this  mass  of  concurrent  and  independent 
testimony,  it  cannot  reasonably  be  doubted  that 
the  Gibbons  commonly  and  habitually  assume  the 
erect  attitude. 

But  level  ground  is  not  the  place  where  these 
animals  can  display  their  very  remarkable  and  pe- 
culiar locomotive  powers,  and  that  prodigious 
activity  which  almost  tempts  one  to  rank  them 
among  flying,  rather  than  among  ordinary  climb- 
ing mammals. 

Mr.  Martin  (I.  c.  p.  430)  has  given  so  excellent 
and  graphic  an  account  of  the  movements  of  a 
Hylohates  agilis,  living  in  the  Zoological  Gardens, 
in  1840,  that  I  will  quote  it  in  full: 

"  It  is  almost  impossible  to  convey  in  words  an  idea 
of  the  quickness  and  graceful  address  of  her  movements: 
they  may  indeed  be  termed  aerial,  as  she  seems  merely  to 
touch  in  her  progress  the  branches  among  which  she  ex- 


42  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  1 

hibits  her  evolutions.  In  these  feats  her  hands  and  arms 
are  the  sole  organs  of  locomotion ;  her  body  hanging  as  if 
suspended  by  a  rope,  sustained  by  one  hand  (the  right  for 
example),  she  launches  herself,  by  an  energetic  movement, 
to  a  distant  branch,  which  she  catches  with  the  left  hand ; 
but  her  hold  is  less  than  momentary:  the  impulse  for  the 
next  launch  is  acquired:  the  branch  then  aimed  at  is 
attained  by  the  right  hand  again  and  quitted  instantane- 
ously, and  so  on  in  alternate  succession.  In  this  manner 
spaces  of  twelve  and  eighteen  feet  are  cleared,  with  the 
greatest  ease  and  uninterruptedly,  for  hours  together, 
without  the  slightest  appearance  of  fatigue  being  mani- 
fested; and  it  is  evident  that  if  more  space  could  be  al- 
lowed, distances  very  greatly  exceeding  eighteen  feet 
would  be  as  easily  cleared;  so  that  jJuvaucel's  assertion 
that  he  had  seen  these  animals  launch  themselves  from 
one  branch  to  another,  forty  feet  asunder,  startling  as  it 
is,  may  be  well  credited.  Sometimes,  on  seizing  a  branch 
in  her  progress,  she  will  throw  herself,  by  the  power  of 
one  arm  only,  completely  round  it,  making  a  revolution 
with  such  rapidity  as  almost  to  deceive  the  eye,  and  con- 
tinue her  progress  with  undiminished  velocity.  It  is  sin- 
gular to  observe  how  suddenly  this  Gibbon  can  stop,  when 
the  impetus  given  by  the  rapidity  and  distance  of  her 
swinging  leaps  would  seem  to  require  a  gradual  abate- 
ment of  her  movements.  In  the  very  midst  of  her  flight 
a  branch  is  seized,  the  body  raised,  and  she  is  seen,  as  if 
by  magic,  quietly  seated  on  it,  grasping  it  with  her  feet. 
As  suddenly  she  again  throws  herself  into  action. 

"  The  following  facts  will  convey  some  notion  of  her 
dexterity  and  quickness.  A  live  bird  was  let  loose  in  her 
apartment;  she  marked  its  flight,  made  a  long  swing  to  a 
distant  branch,  caught  the  bird  with  one  hand  in  her  pas- 
sage, and  attained  the  branch  with  her  other  hand;  her 
aim,  both  at  the  bird  and  at  the  branch,  being  as  success- 
ful as  if  one  object  only  had  engaged  her  attention.    It 


I  THE  GIBBONS.  43 

may  be  added  that  she  instantly  bit  off  the  head  of  the 
bird,  picked  its  feathers,  and  then  threw  it  down  without 
attempting  to  eat  it. 

"  On  another  occasion  this  animal  swung  herself  from 
a  perch,  across  a  passage  at  least  twelve  feet  wide,  against 
a  window  which  it  was  thought  would  be  immediately 
broken :  but  not  so ;  to  the  surprise  of  all,  she  caught  the 
narrow  framework  between  the  panes  with  her  hand,  in 
an  instant  attained  the  proper  impetus,  and  sprang  back 
again  to  the  cage  she  had  left— a  feat  requiring  not  only 
great  strength,  but  the  nicest  precision." 

The  Gibbons  appear  to  be  naturally  very 
gentle,  but  there  is  very  good  evidence  that  they 
will  bite  severely  when  irritated — a  female  Hylo- 
hates  agilis  having  so  severely  lacerated  one  man 
with  her  long  canines,  that  he  died;  while  she  had 
injured  others  so  much  that,  by  way  of  precaution, 
these  formidable  teeth  had  been  filed  down;  but, 
if  threatened,  she  would  still  turn  on  her  keeper. 
The  Gibbons  eat  insects,  but  appear  generally  to 
avoid  animal  food.  A  Siamang,  however,  was 
seen  by  Mr.  Bennett  to  seize  and  devour  greedily 
a  live  lizard.  They  commonly  drink  by  dipping 
their  fingers  in  the  liquid  and  then  licking  them. 
It  is  asserted  that  they  sleep  in  a  sitting  posture. 

Duvaucel  affirms  that  he  has  seen  the  females 
carry  their  young  to  the  waterside  and  there  wash 
their  faces,  in  spite  of  resistance  and  cries.  They 
are  gentle  and  affectionate  in  captivity — full  of 
tricks  and  pettishness,  like  spoiled  children,  and 
yet  not  devoid  of  a  certain  conscience,  as  an  anec- 


44  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

dote,  told  by  Mr.  Bennett  {I.  c.  p.  156),  will  show. 
It  would  appear  that  his  Gibbon  had  a  peculiar  in- 
clination for  disarranging  things  in  the  cabin. 
Among  these  articles,  a  piece  of  soap  would  espe- 
cially attract  his  notice,  and  for  the  removal  of 
this  he  had  been  once  or  twice  scolded.  "  One 
morning,"  says  Mr.  Bennett,  "  I  was  writing,  the 
ape  being  present  in  the  cabin,  when  casting  my 
eyes  towards  him,  I  saw  the  little  fellow  taking  the 
soap.  I  watched  him  without  his  perceiving  that 
I  did  so:  and  he  occasionally  would  cast  a  furtive 
glance  towards  the  place  where  I  sat.  I  pretended 
to  write;  he,  seeing  me  busily  occupied,  took  the 
soap,  and  moved  away  with  it  in  his  paw.  When 
he  had  walked  half  the  length  of  the  cabin,  I 
spoke  quietly,  without  frightening  him.  The  in- 
stant he  found  I  saw  him,  he  walked  back  again, 
and  deposited  the  soap  nearly  in  the  same  place 
from  whence  he  had  taken  it.  There  was  certainly 
something  more  than  instinct  in  that  action:  he 
evidently  betrayed  a  consciousness  of  having  done 
wrong  both  by  his  first  and  last  actions — and  what 
is  reason  if  that  is  not  an  exercise  of  it  ?  " 

The  most  elaborate  account  of  the  natural 
history  of  the  Orang-Utan  extant,  is  that  given 
in  the  "  Verhandelingen  over  de  Natuurlijke  Ge- 
schiedenis  der  Nederlandsche  overzeesche  Bezit- 
tingen  (1839-'4.'5),"  by  Dr.  Salomon  Miiller  and 
Dr.  Schlegel,  and  I  shall  base  what  I  have  to  say 


Fig.  9. — An  adult  male  Orang-Utan,  after  Miiller  and 

Schlegel. 


46  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

■upon  this  subject  almost  entirely  on  their  state- 
ments, adding,  here  and  there,  particulars  of  in- 
terest from  the  writings  of  Brooke,  Wallace,  and 
others. 

The  Orang-Utan  would  rarely  seem  to  exceed 
four  feet  in  height,  but  the  body  is  very  bulky, 
measuring  two-thirds  of  the  height  in  circumfer- 
ence.* 

The  Orang-Utan  is  found  only  in  Sumatra  and 
Borneo,  and  is  common  in  neither  of  these  islands 
— in  both  of  which  it  occurs  always  in  low,  flat 
plains,  never  in  the  mountains.  It  loves  the 
densest  and  most  sombre  of  the  forests,  which 
extend  from  the  sea-shore  inland,  and  thus  is 
found  only  in  the  eastern  half  of  Sumatra,  where 
alone  such  foreats  occur,  though,  occasionally,  it 
strays  over  to  the  western  side. 

*  The  largest  Orang-Utan,  cited  by  Temminck,  meas- 
ured, when  standing  upright,  four  feet;  but  he  mentions 
having  just  received  news  of  the  capture  of  an  Orang 
five  feet  three  inches  high.  Schlegel  and  Miiller  say  that 
their  largest  old  male  measured,  upright,  1.2.5  Nether- 
lands "  el  " ;  and  from  the  crown  to  the  end  of  the  toes, 
1.5  el;  the  circumference  of  the  body  being  about  1  el. 
The  largest  old  female  was  1.09  el  high,  when  standing. 
The  adult  skeleton  in  the  College  of  Surgeons'  Museum, 
if  set  upright,  would  stand  .3  ft.  6-8  in.  from  crown  to 
sole.  Dr.  Humphry  gives  3  ft.  8  in.  as  the  mean  height 
of  two  Orangs.  Of  seventeen  Orangs  examined  by  Mr. 
Wallace,  the  largest  was  4  ft.  2  in.  high,  from  the  heel  to 
the  crown  of  the  head.  Mr.  Spencer  St.  .John,  however,  in 
his  Life  in  the  Forests  of  the  Far  East,  tells  us  of  an 
Orang  of  "  .5  ft.  2  in.,  measuring  fairly  from  the  head  to 
the  heel,"  \^  in.  across  the  face,  and  12  in.  round  the 
wrist.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that  Mr.  St.  John 
measured  this  Orang  himself. 


I  THE  ORANG.  47 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  generally  distributed 
through  Borneo,  except  in  the  mountains,  or 
where  the  population  is  dense.  In  favourable 
places,  the  hunter  may,  by  good  fortune,  see  three 
or  four  in  a  day. 

Except  in  the  pairing  time,  the  old  males 
usually  live  by  themselves.  The  old  females,  and 
the  immature  males,  on  the  other  hand,  are  often 
met  with  in  twos  and  threes;  and  the  former  oc- 
casionally have  young  with  them,  though  the 
pregnant  females  usually  separate  themselves,  and 
sometimes  remain  apart  after  they  have  given 
birth  to  their  offspring.  The  young  Orangs  seem 
to  remain  unusually  long  under  their  mother's  pro- 
tection, probably  in  consequence  of  their  slow 
growth.  While  climbing,  the  mother  always  car- 
ries her  young  against  her  bosom,  the  young  hold- 
ing on  by  his  mother's  hair.*  At  what  time  of 
life  the  Orang-Utan  becomes  capable  of  propaga- 
tion, and  how  long  the  females  go  with  young,  is 
unknown,  but  it  is  probable  that  they  are  not  adult 
until  they  arrive  at  ten  or  fifteen  years  of  age.  A 
female  which  lived  for  five  years  at  Batavia  had  not 
attained  one-third  the  height  of  the  wild  females. 
It  is  probable  that,  after  reaching  adult  years,  they 

*  See  Mr.  Wallace's  account  of  an  infant  "  Orang- 
utan," in  the  Annals  of  Natural  History  for  1856.  Mr. 
Wallace  provided  his  interesting  charge  with  an  artificial 
mother  of  buflFalo-skin,  but  the  cheat  was  too  successful. 
The  infant's  entire  experience  led  it  to  associate  teats  with 
hair,  and  feeling  the  latter,  it  spent  its  existence  in  vain 
endeavours  to  discover  the  former. 


48  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  i 

go  on  growing,  though  slowly,  and  that  they  live  to 
forty  or  fifty  years.  The  Dyaks  tell  of  old  Orangs, 
which  have  not  only  lost  all  their  teeth,  but  which 
find  it  so  troublesome  to  climb,  that  they  maintain 
themselves  on  windfalls  and  juicy  herbage. 

The  Orang  is  sluggish,  exhibiting  none  of  that 

marvellous  activity  characteristic  of  the  Gibbons. 

Hunger  alone  seems  to  stir  him  to  exertion,  and 

when  it  is  stilled,  he  relapses  into  repose.     When 

the  animal  sits,  it  curves  its  back  and  bows  its 

head,  so  as  to  look  straight  down  on  the  ground; 

sometimes  it  holds  on  with  its  hands  by  a  higher 

branch,  sometimes  lets  them  hang  phlegmatically 

down   by   its   side — and   in    these   positions    the 

Orang  will  remain,  for  hours  together,  in  the  same 

spot,  almost  without  stirring,  and  only  now  and 

then  giving  utterance  to  his  deep,  growling  voice. 

By  day  he  usually  climbs  from  one  tree-top  to 

another,  and  only  at  night  descends  to  the  ground, 

and   if   then    threatened   with   danger,    he   seeks 

refuge  among  the  underwood.     When  not  hunted, 

he  remains  a  long  time  in  the  same  locality,  and 

sometimes  stops  for  many  days  on  the  same  tree 

— a  firm  place  among  its  branches  serving  him  for 

a  bed.     It  is  rare  for  the  Orang  to  pass  the  night 

in  the  summit  of  a  large  tree,  probably  because  it 

is  too  windy  and  cold  there  for  him;  but,  as  soon 

as  night  draws  on,  he  descends  from  the  height 

and  seeks  out  a  fit  bed  in  the  lower  and  darker 

part,  or  in  the  leafy  top  of  a  small  tree,  among 


i-  THE  ORANG.  49 

which  he  prefers  Nibong  Palms,  Pandani,  or  one 
of  those  parasitic  Orchids  which  give  the  primaeval 
forests  of  Borneo  so  characteristic  and  striking  an 
appearance.  But  wherever  he  determines  to  sleep, 
there  he  prepares  himself  a  sort  of  nest:  little 
boughs  and  leaves  are  drawn  together  round  the 
selected  spot,  and  bent  crosswise  over  one  another; 
w^hile  to  make  the  bed  soft,  great  leaves  of  Ferns, 
of  Orchids,  of  Pandanus  fascicularis,  Nipa  fruti- 
cans,  &c.,  are  laid  over  them.  Those  which  Miil- 
ler  saw,  many  of  them  being  very  fresh,  were  situ- 
ated at  a  height  of  ten  to  twenty-five  feet  above 
the  ground,  and  had  a  circumference,  on  the 
average,  of  two  or  three  feet.  Some  were  packed 
many  inches  thick  with  Pandanus  leaves;  others 
were  remarkable  only  for  the  cracked  twigs,  which, 
united  in  a  common  centre,  formed  a  regular  plat- 
form. "  The  rude  hut,"  says  Sir  James  Brooke, 
"which  they  are  stated  to  build  in  the  trees, 
would  be  more  properly  called  a  seat  or  nest,  for 
it  has  no  roof  or  cover  of  any  sort.  The  facility 
with  which  they  form  this  nest  is  curious,  and  I 
had  an  opportunity  of  seeing  a  wounded  female 
weave  the  branches  together  and  seat  herself, 
within  a  minute." 

According  to  the  Dyaks  the  Orang  rarely  leaves 
his  bed  before  the  sun  is  well  above  the  horizon 
and  has  dissipated  the  mists.  He  gets  up  about 
nine,  and  goes  to  bed  again  about  five;  but  some- 
times not  till  late  in  the  twilight.  He  lies  some- 
16P 


50  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  l 

times  on  his  back;  or,  by  way  of  change,  turns  on 
one  side  or  the  other,  drawing  his  limbs  up  to  his 
body,  and  resting  his  head  on  his  hand.  When 
the  night  is  cold,  windy,  or  rainy,  he  usually  covers 
his  body  with  a  heap  of  Pandanus,  Nipa,  or  Fern 
leaves,  like  those  of  which  his  bed  is  made,  and 
he  is  especially  careful  to  wrap  up  his  head  in 
them.  It  is  this  habit  of  covering  himself  up 
which  has  probably  led  to  the  fable  that  the  Orang 
builds  huts  in  the  trees. 

Although  the  Orang  resides  mostly  amid  the 
boughs  of  great  trees,  during  the  daytime,  he  is 
very  rarely  seen  squatting  on  a  thick  branch,  as 
other  apes,  and  particularly  the  Gibbons,  do.  The 
Orang,  on  the  contrary,  confines  himself  to  the 
slender  leafy  branches,  so  that  he  is  seen  right  at 
the  top  of  the  trees,  a  mode  of  life  which  is  closely 
related  to  the  constitution  of  his  hinder  limbs, 
and  especially  to  that  of  his  seat.  For  this  is  pro- 
vided with  no  callosities,  such  as  are  possessed 
by  many  of  the  lower  apes,  and  even  by  the  Gib- 
bons; and  those  bones  of  the  pelvis,  which  are 
termed  the  ischia,  and  which  form  the  solid  frame- 
work of  the  surface  on  which  the  body  rests  in 
the  sitting  posture,  are  not  expanded  like  those 
of  the  apes  which  possess  callosities,  but  are  more 
like  those  of  man. 

An  Orang  climbs  so  slowly  and  cautiously,*  as, 

* "  They  are  the  slowest  and  least  active  of  all  the 
monkey  tribe,  and  their  motions  are  surprisingly  awk- 


1  THE  ORANG.  51 

in  this  act,  to  resemble  a  man  more  than  an  ape, 
taking  great  care  of  his  feet,  so  that  injury  of 
them  seems  to  affect  him  far  more  than  it  does 
other  apes.  UnUke  the  Gibbons,  whose  forearms 
do  the  greater  part  of  the  work,  as  they  swing 
from  branch  to  branch,  the  Orang  never  makes 
even  the  smallest  jump.  In  cHmbing,  he  moves 
alternately  one  hand  and  one  foot,  or,  after  having 
laid  fast  hold  with  the  hands,  he  draws  up  both 
feet  together.  In  passing  from  one  tree  to  an- 
other, he  always  seeks  out  a  place  where  the  twigs 
of  both  come  close  together,  or  interlace.  Even 
when  closely  pursued,  his  circumspection  is  amaz- 
ing: he  shakes  the  branches  to  see  if  they  will  bear 
him,  and  then  bending  an  overhanging  bough 
down  by  throwing  his  weight  gradually  along  it, 
he  makes  a  bridge  from  the  tree  he  wishes  to  quit 
to  the  next.* 

On  the  ground  the  Orang  always  goes  labori- 
ously and  shakily,  on  all  fours.  At  starting  he 
will  run  faster  than  a  man,  though  he  may  soon 
be  overtaken.  The  very  long  arms  which,  when 
he  runs,  are  but  little  bent,  raise  the  body  of  the 
Orang  remarkably,  so  that  he  assumes  much  the 
posture  of  a  very  old  man  bent  down  by  age,  and 
making  his  way  along  by  the  help  of  a  stick.  In 
walking,  the  body  is  usually  directed  straight  for- 
ward and  uncouth." — Sir  James  Brooke,  in  the  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Zooloijical  Society,  1841. 

*  Mr.  Wallace's  account  of  the  progression  of  the 
Orang  almost  exactly  corresponds  with  this. 


62  THE  MAN-LIKE  APEa  i 

ward,  unlike  the  other  apes,  which  run  more  or 
less  obliquely ;  except  the  Gibbons,  who  in  these 
as  in  so  many  other  respects,  depart  remarkably 
from  their  fellows. 

The  Orang  cannot  put  its  feet  flat  on  the 
ground,  but  is  supported  upon  their  outer  edges, 
the  heel  resting  more  on  the  ground,  while  the 
curved  toes  partly  rest  upon  the  ground  by  the 
upper  side  of  their  first  joint,  the  two  outermost 
toes  of  each  foot  completely  resting  on  this  surface. 
The  hands  are  held  in  the  opposite  manner,  their 
inner  edges  serving  as  the  chief  support.  The  fin- 
gers are  then  bent  out  in  such  a  manner  that  their 
foremost  joints,  especially  those  of  the  two  inner- 
most fingers,  rest  upon  the  ground  by  their  upper 
sides,  while  the  point  of  the  free  and  straight 
thumb  serves  as  an  additional  fulcrum. 

The  Orang  never  stands  on  its  hind  legs,  and 
all  the  pictures,  representing  it  as  so  doing,  are 
as  false  as  the  assertion  that  it  defends  itself  with 
sticks,  and  the  like. 

The  long  arms  are  of  especial  use,  not  only  in 
climbing,  but  in  the  gathering  of  food  from 
boughs  to  which  the  animal  could  not  trust  his 
weight.  Figs,  blossoms,  and  young  leaves  of  vari- 
ous kinds,  constitute  the  chief  nutriment  of  the 
Orang;  but  strips  of  bamboo  ^wo  or  three  feet  long 
were  found  in  the  stomach  of  a  male.  They  are 
not  known  to  eat  living  animals. 

Although,  when  taken  young,  the  Orang-Utan 


7  THE  ORANa.  53 

goon  becomes  domesticated,  and  indeed  seems  to 
court  human  society,  it  is  naturally  a  very  wild 
and  shy  animal,  though  apparently  sluggish  and 
melancholy.  The  Dyaks  affirm,  that  when  the  old 
males  are  wounded  with  arrows  only,  they  will  oc- 
casionally leave  the  trees  and  rush  raging  upon 
their  enemies,  whose  sole  safety  lies  in  instant 
flight,  as  they  are  sure  to  be  killed  if  caught.* 

*  Sir  James  Brooke,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Waterhouse, 
published  in  the  proceedings  of  the  Zoological  Society  for 
1841,  says: — "On  the  habits  of  the  Orangs,  as  far  as  I 
have  been  able  to  observe  them,  I  may  remark  that  they 
are  as  dull  and  slothful  as  can  well  be  conceived,  and  on 
no  occasion,  when  pursuing  them,  did  they  move  so  fast 
as  to  preclude  my  keeping  pace  with  them  easily  through 
a  moderately  clear  forest;  and  even  when  obstructions 
below  (such  as  wading  up  to  the  neck)  allowed  them  to 
get  away  some  distance,  they  were  sure  to  stop  and  allow 
me  to  come  up.  I  never  observed  the  slightest  attempt  at 
defence,  and  the  wood  which  sometimes  rattled  about  our 
ears  was  broken  by  their  weight,  and  not  thrown,  as  some 
persons  represent.  If  pushed  to  extremity,  however,  the 
Pappan  could  not  be  otherwise  than  formidable,  and  one 
unfortunate  man,  who,  with  a  party,  was  trying  to  catch 
a  large  one  alive,  lost  two  of  his  fingers,  besides  being 
severely  bitten  on  the  face,  whilst  the  animal  finally  beat 
off  his  pursuers  and  escaped." 

Mr.  Wallace,  on  the  other  hand,  affirms  that  he  has 
several  times  observed  them  throwing  down  branches 
when  pursued.  "  It  is  true  he  does  not  throw  them  at  a 
person,  but  casts  them  down  vertically;  for  it  is  evi- 
dent that  a  bough  cannot  be  thrown  to  any  distance  from 
the  top  of  a  lofty  tree.  In  one  case  a  female  Mias,  on  a 
durian  tree,  kept  up  for  at  least  ten  minutes  a  continu- 
ous shower  of  branches  and  of  the  heavy,  spined  fruits,  as 
large  as  32-pounders,  which  most  effectually  kept  us  clear 
of  the  tree  she  was  on.  She  could  be  seen  breaking  them 
off  and  throwing  them  down  with  every  appearance  of 
rage,  uttering  at  intervals  a  loud  pumping  grunt,  and 
evidently   meaning   mischief." — "  On   the   Habits   of   the 


54  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

But,  though  possessed  of  immense  strength,  it 
is  rare  for  the  Orang  to  attempt  to  defend  itself, 
especially  when  attacked  with  fire-arms.  On  such 
occasions  he  endeavours  to  hide  himself,  or  to 
escape  along  the  topmost  branches  of  the  trees, 
breaking  off  and  throwing  down  the  boughs  as  he 
goes.  When  wounded  he  betakes  himself  to  the 
highest  attainable  point  of  the  tree,  and  emits 
a  singular  cry,  consisting  at  first  of  high  notes, 
which  at  length  deepen  into  a  low  roar,  not  unlike 
that  of  a  panther.  While  giving  out  the  high 
notes  the  Orang  thrusts  out  his  lips  into  a  funnel 
shape;  but  in  uttering  the  low  notes  he  holds  his 
mouth  wide  open,  and  at  the  same  time  the  great 
throat  bag,  or  laryngeal  sac,  becomes  distended. 

According  to  the  Dyaks,  the  only  animal  the 
Orang  measures  his  strength  with  is  the  crocodile, 
who  occasionally  seizes  him  on  his  visits  to  the 
water  side.  But  they  say  that  the  Orang  is  more 
than  a  match  for  his  enemy,  and  beats  him  to 
death,  or  rips  up  his  throat  by  pulling  the  jaws 
asunder! 

Much  of  what  has  been  here  stated  was  proba- 
bly derived  by  Dr.  Miiller  from  the  reports  of  his 
Dyak  hunters;  but  a  large  male,  four  feet  high, 
lived  in  captivity,  under  his  observation,  for  a 
month,  and  receives  a  very  bad  character. 

Oranp-Utan,"  Anrnils  of  Natural  Hisiory.  1856.  Thia 
statement,  it  will  be  observed,  is  quite  in  accordance  with 
that  contained  in  the  letter  of  the  Resident  Palm  quoted 
above  (p.  23). 


X  THE  ORANG.  55 

"  He  was  a  very  wild  beast,"  says  Miiller,  "  of 
prodigious  strength,  and  false  and  wicked  to  the 
last  degree.  If  any  one  approached  he  rose  up 
slowly  with  a  low  growl,  fixed  his  eyes  in  the  direc- 
tion in  which  he  meant  to  make  his  attack, 
slowly  passed  his  hand  between  the  bars  of  his 
cage,  and  then  extending  his  long  arm,  gave  a 
sudden  grip — usually  at  the  face."  He  never 
tried  to  bite  (though  Orangs  will  bite  one  an- 
other), his  great  weapons  of  offence  and  defence 
being  his  hands. 

His  intelligence  was  very  great;  and  Miiller  re- 
marks that  though  the  faculties  of  the  Orang  have 
been  estimated  too  highly,  yet  Cuvier,  had  he  seen 
this  specimen,  would  not  have  considered  its  intelli- 
gence to  be  only  a  little  higher  than  that  of  the  dog. 

His  hearing  was  very  acute,  but  the  sense  of 
vision  seemed  to  be  less  perfect.  The  under  lip 
was  the  great  organ  of  touch,  and  played  a  very 
important  part  in  drinking,  being  thrust  out  like 
a  trough,  so  as  either  to  catch  the  falling  rain,  or 
to  receive  the  contents  of  the  half  cocoa-nut  shell 
full  of  water  with  which  the  Orang  was  supplied, 
and  which,  in  drinking,  he  poured  into  the  trough 
thus  formed. 

In  Borneo  the  Orang-Utan  of  the  Malays  goes 
by  the  name  of  "  Mias  "  among  the  Dyaks,  who 
distinguish  several  kinds  as  Mias  Pappan,  or 
Zimo,  Mias  Kassu,  and  Mias  Rambi.  Whether 
these  are  distinct  species,  however,  or  whether  they 


56  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

are  mere  races,  and  how  far  any  of  them  are 
identical  with  the  Sumatran  Orang,  as  Mr.  Wal- 
lace thinks  the  Mias  Pappan  to  be,  are  problems 
which  are  at  present  undecided;  and  the  variabil- 
ity of  these  great  apes  is  so  extensive,  that  the 
settlement  of  the  question  is  a  matter  of  great 
difficulty.  Of  the  form  called  "  Mias  Pappan," 
Mr.  Wallace  *  observes, 

"  It  is  known  by  its  large  size,  and  by  the  lateral  ex- 
pansion of  the  face  into  fatty  protuberances,  or  ridges, 
over  the  temporal  muscles,  which  have  been  mis-termed 
callosities,  as  they  are  perfectly  soft,  smooth,  and  flexible. 
Five  of  this  form,  measured  by  me,  varied  only  from  4 
feet  1  inch  to  4  feet  2  inches  in  height,  from  the  heel  to 
the  crown  of  the  head,  the  girth  of  the  body  from  3  feet 
to  3  feet  7i  inches,  and  the  extent  of  the  outstretched 
arms  from  7  feet  2  inches  to  7  feet  6  inches;  the  width 
of  the  face  from  10  to  13|  inches.  The  colour  and  length 
of  the  hair  varied  in  different  individuals,  and  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  same  individual;  some  possessed  a 
rudimentary  nail  on  the  great  toe,  others  none  at  all ;  but 
they  otherwise  present  no  external  differences  on  which 
to  establish  even  varieties  of  a  species. 

"  Yet,  when  we  examine  the  crania  of  these  indi- 
viduals, we  find  remarkable  differences  of  form,  propor- 
tion, and  dimension,  no  two  being  exactly  alike.  The 
slope  of  the  profile,  and  the  projection  of  the  muzzle,  to- 
gether with  the  size  of  the  cranium,  offer  differences  as 
decided  as  those  existing  between  the  most  strongly 
marked  forms  of  the  Caucasian  and  African  crania  in  the 
human  species.    The  orbits  vary  in  width  and  height,  the 

*  On  the  Orang-Utan,  or  Mias  of  Borneo,  Annals  of 
Natural  History,  1856. 


1  THE  ORANG.  57 

cranial  ridge  is  either  single  or  double,  either  much  or 
little  developed,  and  the  zygomatic  aperture  varies  con- 
siderably in  size.  This  variation  in  the  proportions  of  the 
crania  enables  us  satisfactorily  to  explain  the  marked  dif- 
fernce  presented  by  the  single-crested  and  double-crested 
skulls,  which  have  been  thought  to  prove  the  existence  of 
two  large  species  of  Orang.  The  external  surface  of  the 
skull  varies  considerably  in  size,  as  do  also  the  zygomatic 
aperture  and  the  temporal  muscle;  but  they  bear  no  ne- 
cessary relation  to  each  other,  a  small  muscle  often  exist- 
ing with  a  large  cranial  surface,  and  vice  versd.  Now, 
those  skulls  which  have  the  largest  and  strongest  jaws 
and  the  widest  zygomatic  aperture,  have  the  muscles  so 
large  that  they  meet  on  the  crown  of  the  skull,  and  de- 
posit the  bony  ridge  which  separates  them,  and  which  is 
the  highest  in  that  which  has  the  smallest  cranial  surface. 
In  those  which  combine  a  large  surface  with  compara- 
tively weak  jaws,  and  small  zygomatic  aperture,  the  mus- 
cles, on  each  side,  do  not  extend  to  the  crown,  a  space  of 
from  1  to  2  inches  remaining  between  them,  and  along 
their  margins  small  ridges  are  formed.  Intermediate 
forms  are  found,  in  which  the  ridges  meet  only  in  the 
hinder  part  of  the  skull.  The  form  and  size  of  the  ridges 
are  therefore  independent  of  age,  being  sometimes  more 
strongly  developed  in  the  less  aged  animal.  Professor 
Temminck  states  that  the  series  of  skulls  in  the  Leyden 
Museum  shows  the  same  result." 

Mr.  Wallace  observed  two  male  adult  Orangs 
(Mias  Kassu  of  the  Dyaks),  however,  so  very  dif- 
ferent from  any  of  these  that  he  concludes  them 
to  be  specifically  distinct;  they  were  respectively 
3  feet  8|  inches  and  3  feet  9|  inches  high,  and 
possessed  no  sign  of  the  cheek  excrescences,  but 
otherwise  resembled  the  larger  kinds.     The  skull 


58  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  1 

has  no  crest,  but  two  bony  ridges,  If  inches  to 
2  inches  apart,  as  in  the  Simla  morio  of  Professor 
Owen,  The  teeth,  however,  are  immense,  equal- 
ling or  surpassing  those  of  the  other  species.  The 
females  of  both  these  kinds,  according  to  Mr.  Wal- 
lace, are  devoid  of  excrescences,  and  resemble  the 
smaller  males,  but  are  shorter  by  1^  to  3  inches, 
and  their  canine  teeth  are  comparatively  small, 
subtruncated  and  dilated  at  the  base,  as  in  the 
so-called  Simia  morio,  which  is,  in  all  probability, 
the  skull  of  a  female  of  the  same  species  as  the 
smaller  males.  Both  males  and  females  of  this 
smaller  species  are  distinguishable,  according  to 
Mr.  Wallace,  by  the  comparatively  large  size  of  the 
middle  incisors  of  the  upper  jaw. 

So  far  as  I  am  aware,  no  one  has  attempted  to 
dispute  the  accuracy  of  the  statements  which  I 
have  just  quoted  regarding  the  habits  of  the  two 
Asiatic  man-like  apes;  and  if  true,  they  must  be 
admitted  as  evidence,  that  such  an  Ape — 

Istly,  May  readily  move  along  the  ground  in 
the  erect,  or  semi-erect,  position,  and  without  di- 
rect support  from  its  arms. 

Sndly,  That  it  may  possess  an  extremely  loud 
voice,  so  loud  as  to  be  readily  heard  one  or  two 
miles. 

Srdly,  That  it  may  be  capable  of  great  vicious- 
ness  and  violence  when  irritated:  and  this  is  espe- 
cially true  of  adult  males. 


I  THE  CHIMPANZEE.  59 

4thly,  That  it  may  build  a  nest  to  sleep  in. 

Such  being  well  established  facts  respecting 
the  Asiatic  Anthropoids,  analogy  alone  might  jus- 
tify us  in  expecting  the  African  species  to  offer 
similar  peculiarities,  separately  or  combined;  or, 
at  any  rate,  would  destroy  the  force  of  any  at- 
tempted a  priori  argument  against  such  direct 
testimony  as  might  be  adduced  in  favour  of  their 
existence.  And,  if  the  organization  of  any  of  the 
African  Apes  could  be  demonstrated  to  fit  it  better 
than  either  of  its  Asiatic  allies  for  the  erect  posi- 
tion and  for  efficient  attack,  there  would  be  still 
less  reason  for  doubting  its  occasional  adoption  of 
the  upright  attitude  or  of  aggressive  proceedings. 

From  the  time  of  Tyson  and  Tulpius  down- 
wards, the  habits  of  the  young  Chimpanzee  in 
a  state  of  captivity  have  been  abundantly  reported 
and  commented  upon.  But  trustworthy  evidence 
as  to  the  manners  and  customs  of  adult  anthro- 
poids of  this  species,  in  their  native  woods,  was 
almost  wanting  up  to  the  time  of  the  publication 
of  the  paper  by  Dr.  Savage,  to  which  I  have  al- 
ready referred;  containing  notes  of  the  observa- 
tions which  h^made,  and  of  the  information  which 
he  collected  from  sources  which  he  considered 
trustworthy,  while  resident  at  Cape  Palmas,  at  the 
north-western  limit  of  the  Bight  of  Benin. 

The  adult  Chimpanzees  measured  by  Dr.  Sav- 
age, never  exceeded,  though  the  males  may  almost 
attain,  five  feet  in  height. 


60  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  i 

"When  at  rest  the  sitting  posture  is  that  generally 
assumed.  They  are  sometimes  seen  standing  and  walk- 
ing, but  when  thus  detected,  they  immediately  take  to  all 
fours,  and  flee  from  the  presence  of  the  observer.  Such  is 
their  organisation  that  they  cannot  stand  erect,  but  lean 
forward.  Hence  they  are  seen,  when  standing,  with  the 
hands  clasped  over  the  occiput,  or  the  lumbar  region, 
which  would  seem  necessary  to  balance  or  ease  of  posture. 

"  The  toes  of  the  adult  are  strongly  flexed  and  turned 
inwards,  and  cannot  be  perfectly  straightened.  In  the 
attempt  the  skin  gathers  into  thick  folds  on  the  back, 
showing  that  the  full  expansion  of  the  foot,  as  is  necessary 
in  walking,  is  unnatural.  The  natural  position  is  on  all 
fours,  the  body  anteriorly  resting  upon  the  knuckles. 
These  are  greatly  enlarged,  with  the  skin  protuberant  and 
thickened  like  the  sole  of  the  foot. 

"  They  are  expert  climbers,  as  one  would  suppose  from 
their  organisation.  In  their  gambols  they  swing  from 
limb  to  limb  to  a  great  distance,  and  leap  with  astonish- 
ing agility.  It  is  not  unusual  to  see  the  '  old  folks '  (in 
the  language  of  an  observer)  sitting  under  a  tree  regaling 
themselves  with  fruit  and  friendly  chat,  while  their  '  chil- 
dren'  are  leaping  around  them,  and  s^\^nging  from  tree 
to  tree  with  boisterous  merriment. 

"  As  seen  here,  they  cannot  be  called  gregarious,  sel- 
dom more  than  five,  or  ten  at  most,  being  found  together. 
It  has  been  said,  on  good  authority,  that  they  occasionally 
assemble  in  large  numbers,  in  gambols.  My  informant 
asserts  that  he  saw  once  not  less  than  fifty  so  engaged; 
hooting,  screaming,  and  drumming  with  sticks  upon  old 
logs,  which  is  done  in  the  latter  case  with  equal  facility 
by  the  four  extremities.  They  do  not  appear  ever  to  act 
on  the  oflFensive,  and  seldom,  if  ever  really,  on  the  de- 
fensive. When  about  to  be  captured,  they  resist  by  throw- 
ing their  arms  about  their  opponent,  and  attempting  to 
draw  him  into  contact  with  their  teeth."  (Savage,  I.  c. 
p.  384.) 


I  THE  CHIMPANZEE.  61 

With  respect  to  this  last  point  Dr.  Savage  is 
very  explicit  in  another  place: 

"  Biting  is  their  principal  art  of  defence.  I  have  seen 
one  man  who  had  been  thus  severely  wounded  in  the 
feet. 

"  The  strong  development  of  the  canine  teeth  in  the 
adult  would  seem  to  indicate  a  carnivorous  propensity; 
but  in  no  state  save  that  of  domestication  do  they  mani- 
fest it.  At  first  they  reject  flesh,  but  easily  acquire  a 
fondness  for  it.  The  canines  are  early  developed,  and  evi- 
dently designed  to  act  the  important  part  of  weapons  of 
defence.  When  in  contact  with  man  almost  the  first 
effort  of  the  animal  is — to  bite. 

"  They  avoid  the  abodes  of  men,  and  build  their  habita- 
tions in  trees.  Their  construction  is  more  that  of  tiests 
than  huts,  as  they  have  been  erroneously  termed  by  some 
naturalists.  They  generally  build  not  far  above  the 
ground.  Branches  or  twigs  are  bent,  or  partly  broken, 
and  crossed,  and  the  whole  supported  by  the  body  of  a 
limb  or  a  crotch.  Sometimes  a  nest  will  be  found  near 
the  end  of  a  strong  leafy  branch  twenty  or  thirty  feet 
from  the  ground.  One  I  have  lately  seen  that  could  not 
be  less  than  forty  feet,  and  more  probably  it  was  fifty. 
But  this  is  an  unusual  height. 

"  Their  dwelling-place  is  not  permanent,  but  changed 
in  pursuit  of  food  and  solitude,  according  to  tlie  force  of 
circumstances.  We  more  often  see  them  in  elevated 
places ;  but  this  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  low  grounds, 
being  more  favourable  for  the  natives'  rice-farms,  are  the 
oftener  cleared,  and  hence  are  almost  always  wanting  in 
suitable  trees  for  their  nests.  ...  It  is  seldom  that  more 
than  one  or  two  nests  are  seen  upon  the  same  tree,  or  in 
the  same  neighbourhood:  five  have  been  found,  but  it 
was  an  unusual  circumstance."  .  .  . 

"  They  are  very  filthy  in  their  habits.  ...  It  is  a 


62  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  l 

tradition  with  the  natives  generally  here,  that  they  were 
once  members  of  their  own  tribe:  that  for  their  depraved 
habits  they  were  expelled  from  all  human  society,  and, 
that  through  an  obstinate  indulgence  of  their  vile  pro- 
pensities, they  have  degenerated  into  their  present  state 
and  organisation.  They  are,  however,  eaten  by  them,  and 
when  cooked  with  the  oil  and  pulp  of  the  palm-nut  con- 
sidered a  highly  palatable  morsel. 

"  They  exhibit  a  remarkable  degree  of  intelligence  in 
their  habits,  and,  on  the  part  of  the  mother,  much  affec- 
tion for  their  young.  The  second  female  described  was 
upon  a  tree  when  first  discovered,  with  her  mate  and  two 
young  ones  (a  male  and  a  female).  Her  first  impulse  was 
to  descend  with  great  rapidity  and  make  off  into  the 
thicket,  with  her  mate  and  female  offspring.  The  young 
male  remaining  behind,  she  soon  returned  to  the  rescue. 
She  ascended  and  took  him  in  her  arms,  at  which  moment 
she  was  shot,  the  ball  passing  through  the  fore-arm 
of  the  young  one,  on  its  way  to  the  heart  of  the 
mother.  .  .  . 

"  In  a  recent  case,  the  mother,  when  discovered,  re- 
mained upon  the  tree  with  her  offspring,  watching  in- 
tently the  movements  of  the  hunter.  As  he  took  aim,  she 
motioned  with  her  hand,  precisely  in  the  manner  of  a  hu- 
man being,  to  have  him  desist  and  go  away.  When  the 
wound  has  not  proved  instantly  fatal,  they  have  been 
known  to  stop  the  flow  of  blood  by  pressing  with  the 
hand  upon  the  part,  and  when  this  did  not  succeed,  to 
apply  leaves  and  grass.  .  .  .  When  shot,  they  give  a  sud- 
den screech,  not  unlike  that  of  a  human  being  in  sudden 
and  acute  distress." 

The  ordinary  voice  of  the  Chimpanzee,  how- 
ever, iB  affirmed  to  be  hoarse,  guttural,  and  not 
very  loud,  somewhat  like  "  whoo-whoo."  (I.  c.  p. 
365.) 


1  THE  GORILLA.  63 

The  analogy  of  the  Chimpanzee  to  the  Orang, 
in  its  nest-building  habit  and  in  the  mode  of 
forming  its  nest,  is  exceedingly  interesting;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  activity  of  this  ape,  and 
its  tendency  to  bite,  are  particulars  in  which  it 
rather  resembles  the  Gibbons.  In  extent  of  geo- 
graphical range,  again,  the  Chimpanzees — which 
are  found  from  Sierra  Leone  to  Congo — remind 
one  of  the  Gibbons,  rather  than  of  either  of  the 
other  man-like  apes;  and  it  seems  not  unlikely 
that,  as  is  the  case  with  the  Gibbons,  there  may  be 
several  species  spread  over  the  geographical  area 
of  the  genus. 

The  same  excellent  observer,  from  whom  I 
have  borrowed  the  preceding  account  of  the  habits 
of  the  adult  Chimpanzee,  published  fifteen  years 
ago,*  an  account  of  the  Gorilla,  which  has,  in 
its  most  essential  points,  been  confirmed  by  subse- 
quent observers,  and  to  which  so  very  little  has 
really  been  added,  that  in  justice  to  Dr.  Savage  ] 
give  it  almost  in  full. 

"  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  my  account  is  based 
upon  the  statements  of  the  aborigines  of  that  region  (the 
Gaboon).  In  this  connection,  it  may  also  be  proper  for 
me  to  remark,  that  having  been  a  missionary  resident  for 
several  years,  studying,  from  habitual  intercourse,  the 
African  mind  and  character,  I  felt  myself  prepared  to 
discriminate  and  decide  upon  the  probability  of  their 
statements.    Besides,  being  familiar  with  the  history  and 

*  Notice  of  the  external  characters  and  habits  of  Trog- 
lodytes  Gorilla.     Boston  Journal   of   Natural    History, 

1847. 


Fig.  10.— The  Gorilla,  after  Wolf. 


I  THE  GORILLA.  65 

habits  of  its  interesting  congener  (Trog.  niger,  Geoff.),  I 
was  able  to  separate  their  accounts  of  the  two  animals 
which,  having  the  same  locality  and  a  similarity  of  habit- 
are  confounded  in  the  minds  of  the  mass,  especially  as  but 
few — such  as  traders  to  the  interior  and  huntsmen — have 
ever  seen  the  animal  in  question. 

"The  tribe  from  which  our  knowledge  of  the  animal 
is  derived,  and  whose  territory  forms  its  habitat,  is  the 
Mpongwe,  occupying  both  banks  of  the  River  Gaboon, 
from  its  mouth  to  some  fifty  or  sixty  miles  upward.  ,  .  . 
"  If  the  word  '  Pongo  '  be  of  African  origin,  it  is  proba- 
bly a  corruption  of  the  word  Mpongwe,  the  name  of  the 
tribe  on  the  banks  of  the  Gaboon,  and  hence  applied  to 
the  region  they  inhabit.  Their  local  name  for  the  Chim- 
panzee is  Enche-eko,  as  near  as  it  can  be  Anglicised,  from 
which  the  common  term  '  Jocko  '  probably  comes.  The 
Mpongwe  appellation  for  its  new  congener  is  Eng6-ena, 
prolonging  the  sound  of  the  first  vowel,  and  slightly  sound- 
ing the  second. 

"  The  habitat  of  «the  Etigc-ena  is  the  interior  of  lower 
Guinea,  whilst  that  of  the  Enche-eko  is  nearer  the  sea- 
board. 

"  Its  height  is  about  five  feet ;  it  is  disproportionately 
broad  across  the  shoulders,  thickly  covered  with  coarse 
black  hair,  which  is  said  to  be  similar  in  its  arrangement 
to  that  of  the  EncM-eko;  with  age  it  becomes  gray,  which 
fact  has  given  rise  to  the  report  that  both  animals  are 
seen  of  different  colours. 

"  Head. — The  prominent  leatures  of  the  head  are,  the 
great  width  and  elongation  of  the  face,  the  depth  of  the 
molar  region,  the  branches  of  the  lower  jaw  being  very 
deep  and  extending  far  backward,  and  the  comparative 
smallness  of  the  cranial  portion ;  the  eyes  are  very  large, 
and  said  to  be  like  those  of  the  Enchi-eko,  a  bright  hazel; 
nose  broad  and  flat,  slightly  elevated  towards  the  root; 
the  muzzle  broad,  and  prominent  lips  and  chin,  with  scat- 
tered gray  hairs ;  the  under  lip  highly  mobile,  and  capable 
169 


QQ  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  I 

of  great  elongation  when  the  animal  is  enraged,  then 
hanging  over  the  chin;  skin  of  the  face  and  ears  naked, 
and  of  a  dark  brown,  approaching  to  black. 

"  The  most  remarkable  feature  of  the  head  is  a  high 
ridge,  or  crest  of  hair,  in  the  course  of  the  sagittal  suture, 
which  meets  posteriorly  with  a  transverse  ridge  of  the 
same,  but  less  prominent,  running  round  from  the  back 
of  one  ear  to  the  other.  The  animal  has  the  power  of 
moving  the  scalp  freely  forward  and  back,  and  when  en- 
raged is  said  to  contract  it  strongly  over  the  brow,  thus 
bringing  down  the  hairy  ridge  and  pointing  the  hair  for- 
ward, so  as  to  present  an  indescribably  ferocious  aspect. 


Fig.  11.— Gorilla  walking  (after  Wolf). 


"  Neck  short,  thick,  and  hairy ;  chest  and  shoulders 
very  broad,  said  to  be  fully  double  the  size  of  the  Ench6- 
ekos;  arms  very  long,  reaching  some  way  below  the  knee 
— the  fore-arm  much  the  shortest;  hands  very  large,  the 
thumbs  much  larger  than  the  fingers.  .  .  . 

"  The  gait  is  shuffling ;  the  motion  of  the  body,  which 
is  never  upright  as  in  man,  but  bent  forward,  is  somewhat 
rolling,  or  from  side  to  side.  The  arms  being  longer  than 
the  Chimpanzee,  it  does  not  stoop  as  much  in  walking; 
like  that  animal,  it  makes  progression  by  thrusting  its 


1  THE  GORILLA.  67 

arms  forward,  resting  the  hands  on  the  ground,  and  then 
giving  the  body  a  half  jumping,  half  swinging  motion  be- 
tween them.  In  this  aet  it  is  said  not  to  flex  the  fingers, 
as  does  the  Chimpanzee,  resting  on  its  knuckles,  but  to 
extend  them,  making  a  fulcrum  of  the  hand.  When  it 
assumes  the  walking  posture,  to  which  it  is  said  to  be 
much  inclined,  it  balances  its  huge  body  by  flexing  its 
arms  upward. 

"  They  live  in  bands,  but  are  not  so  numerous  as  the 
Chimpanzees;  the  females  generally  exceed  the  other  sex 
in  number.  My  informants  all  agree  in  the  assertion  that 
but  one  adult  male  is  seen  in  a  band;  that  when  the 
young  males  grow  up,  a  contest  takes  place  for  mastery, 
and  the  strongest,  by  killing  and  driving  out  the  others, 
establishes  himself  as  the  head  of  the  community." 

Dr.  Savage  repudiates  the  stories  about  the 
Gorillas  carrying  off  women  and  vanquishing  ele- 
phants and  then  adds — 

"  Their  dwellings,  if  they  may  be  so  called,  are  similar 
to  those  of  the  Chimpanzee,  consisting  simply  of  a  few 
sticks  and  leafy  branches,  supported  by  the  crotches  and 
limbs  of  trees:  they  afford  no  shelter,  and  are  occupied 
only  at  night. 

"  They  are  exceedingly  ferocious,  and  always  offensive 
in  their  habits,  never  running  from  man,  as  does  the 
Chimpanzee.  They  are  objects  of  terror  to  the  natives, 
and  are  never  encountered  by  them  except  on  the  defen- 
sive. The  few  that  have  been  captured  were  killed  by 
elephant  hunters  and  native  traders,  as  they  came  sud- 
denly upon  them  while  passing  through  the  forests. 

"  It  is  said  that  when  the  male  is  first  seen  he  gives 
a  terrific  yell,  that  resounds  far  and  wide  through  the 
forest,  something  like  kh — ah!  kh — ah!  prolonged  and 
shrill.  His  enormous  jaws  are  widely  opened  at  each  ex- 
piration, his  under  lip  hangs  over  the  chin,  and  the  hairy 


68  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  l 

ridge  and  scalp  are  contracted  upon  the  brow,  presenting 
an  aspect  of  indescribable  ferocity. 

"  The  females  and  young,  at  the  first  cry,  quickly  dis- 
appear. He  then  approaches  the  enemy  in  great  fury, 
pouring  out  his  horrid  cries  in  quick  succession.  The 
hunter  awaits  his  approach  with  his  gun  extended;  if 
his  aim  is  not  sure,  he  permits  the  animal  to  grasp  the 
barrel,  and  as  he  carries  it  to  his  mouth  (which  is  his 
habit)  he  fires.  Should  the  gun  fail  to  go  off,  the  barrel 
(that  of  the  ordinary  musket,  which  is  thin)  is  crushed 
between  his  teeth,  and  the  encounter  soon  proves  fatal  to 
the  hunter. 

"  In  the  wild  state,  their  habits  are  in  general  like 
those  of  the  Troglodytes  nlger,  building  their  nests  loose- 
ly in  trees,  living  on  similar  fruits,  and  changing  their 
place  of  resort  from  force  of  circumstances." 

Dr.  Savage's  observations  were  confirmed  and 
supplemented  by  those  of  Mr.  Ford,  who  communi- 
cated an  interesting  paper  on  the  Gorilla  to  the 
Philadelphian  Academy  of  Sciences,  in  1852. 
With  respect  to  the  geographical  distribution  of 
this  greatest  of  all  the  man-like  Apes,  Mr.  Ford 
remarks : 

"  This  animal  inhabits  the  range  of  mountains  that 
traverse  the  interior  of  Guinea,  from  the  Cameroon  in 
the  north,  to  Angola  in  the  south,  and  about  100  miles 
inland,  and  called  by  the  geographers  Crystal  Mountains. 
The  limit  to  which  this  animal  extends,  either  north  or 
south,  I  am  unable  to  define.  But  that  limit  is  doubtless 
some  distance  north  of  this  river  [Gaboon].  I  was  able 
to  certify  myself  of  this  fact  in  a  late  excursion  to  the 
head-waters  of  the  Mooney  (Danger)  River,  which  comes 
into  the  sea  some  sixty  miles  from  this  place.  I  was  in- 
formed   (credibly,   I   think)    that   they   were   numerous 


I  THE  GORILLA.  69 

among  the  mountains  in  which  that  river  rises,  and  far 
north  of  that. 

"  In  the  south,  this  species  extends  to  the  Congo  River, 
as  I  am  told  by  native  traders  who  have  visited  the  coast 
between  the  Gaboon  and  that  river.  Beyond  that,  I  am 
not  informed.  This  animal  is  only  found  at  a  distance 
from  the  coast  in  most  cases,  and,  according  to  my  best  in- 
formation, approaches  it  nowhere  so  nearly  as  on  the 
south  side  of  this  river,  where  they  have  been  found 
within  ten  miles  of  the  sea.  This,  however,  is  only  of  late 
occurrence.  I  am  informed  by  some  of  the  oldest  Mpong- 
we  men  that  formerly  he  was  only  found  on  the  sources 
of  the  river,  but  that  at  present  he  may  be  found  within 
half-a-day's  walk  of  its  mouth.  Formerly  he  inhabited 
the  mountainous  ridge  where  Bushmen  alone  inhabited, 
but  now  he  boldly  approaches  the  Mpongwe  plantations. 
This  is  doubtless  the  reason  of  the  scarcity  of  informa- 
tion in  years  past,  as  the  opportunities  for  recei\ing  a 
knowledge  of  the  animal  have  not  been  wanting;  traders 
having  for  one  hundred  years  frequented  this  river,  and 
specimens,  such  as  have  been  brought  here  within  a  year, 
could  not  have  been  exhibited  without  having  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  most  stupid." 

One  specimen  Mr.  Ford  examined  weighed 
170  lbs.,  without  the  thoracic,  or  pelvic,  viscera, 
and  measured  four  feet  four  inches  round  the  chest. 
This  writer  describes  so  minutely  and  graphically 
the  onslaught  of  the  Gorilla — though  he  does  not 
for  a  moment  pretend  to  have  witnessed  the  scene 
— that  I  am  tempted  to  give  this  part  of  his  paper 
in  full,  for  comparison  with  other  narratives: 

"  He  always  rises  to  his  feet  when  making  an  attack, 
though  he  approaches  his  antagonist  in  a  stooping  pos- 
ture. 


YO  THE  MAX-LIKE  APES.  I 

"  Though  he  never  lies  in  wait,  yet,  when  he  hears, 
sees,  or  scents  a  man,  he  immediately  utters  his  charac- 
teristic cry,  prepares  for  an  attack,  and  always  acts  on 
the  offensive.  The  cry  he  utters  resembles  a  grunt  more 
than  a  growl,  and  is  similar  to  the  cry  of  the  Chimpanzee, 
when  irritated,  but  vastly  louder.  It  is  said  to  be  audible 
at  a  great  distance.  His  preparation  consists  in  attend- 
ing the  females  and  young  ones,  by  whom  he  is  usually 
accompanied,  to  a  little  distance.  He,  however,  soon  re- 
turns, -with  his  crest  erect  and  projecting  forward,  his 
nostrils  dilated,  and  his  under-lip  thrown  down,  at  the 
same  time  uttering  his  characteristic  yell,  designed,  it 
would  seem,  to  terrify  his  antagonist.  Instantly,  unless 
he  is  disabled  by  a  well-directed  shot,  he  makes  an  onset, 
and,  striking  his  antagonist  with  the  palm  of  his  hands, 
or  seizing  him  with  a  grasp  from  which  there  is  no  escape, 
he  dashes  him  upon  the  ground,  and  lacerates  him  with 
his  tusks. 

"  He  is  said  to  seize  a  musket,  and  instantly  crush  the 

barrel   between   his   teeth This   animal's   savage 

nature  is  very  well  shown  by  the  implacable  desperation 
of  a  young  one  that  was  brought  here.  It  was  taken 
very  young,  and  kept  four  months,  and  many  means  were 
used  to  tame  it ;  but  it  was  incorrigible,  so  that  it  bit  me 
an  hour  before  it  died." 

Mr.  Ford  discredits  the  house-building  and 
elephant-driving  stories,  and  says  that  no  well- 
informed  natives  believe  them.  They  are  tales 
told  to  children. 

I  might  quote  other  testimony  to  a  similar  ef- 
fect, but,  as  it  appears  to  me,  less  carefully  weighed 
and  sifted,  from  the  letters  of  MM.  Franquet  and 
Gautier  Laboullay,  appended  to  the  memoir  of 
M.  I.  G.  St.  Hilaire,  which  I  have  already  cited. 


I  THE  GORILLA.  71 

Bearing  in  mind  what  is  known  regarding  the 
Orang  and  the  Gibbon,  the  statements  of  Dr. 
Savage  and  Mr.  Ford  do  not  appear  to  me  to  be 
justly  open  to  criticism  on  a  priori  grounds.  The 
Gibbons,  as  we  have  seen,  readily  assume  the  erect 
posture,  but  the  Gorilla  is  far  better  fitted  by  its 
organization  for  that  attitude  than  are  the  Gib- 
bons:  if  the  laryngeal  pouches  of  the  Gibbons,  as 
is  very  likely,  are  important  in  giving  volume 
to  a  voice  which  can  be  heard  for  half  a  league, 
the  Gorilla,  which  has  similar  sacs,  more  largely 
developed,  and  whose  bulk  is  fivefold  that  of  a 
Gibbon,  may  well  "be  audible  for  twice  that  dis- 
tance. If  the  Orang  fights  with  its  hands,  the 
Gibbons  and  Chimpanzees  with  the  teeth,  the 
Gorilla  may,  probably  enough,  do  either  or  both; 
nor  is  there  anything  to  be  said  against  either 
Chimpanzee  or  Gorilla  building  a  nest,  when  it  is 
proved  that  the  Orang-Utan  habitually  performs 
that  feat. 

With  all  this  evidence,  now  ten  to  fifteen  years 
old,  before  the  world,  it  is  not  a  little  surprising 
that  the  assertions  of  a  recent  traveller,  who,  so 
far  as  the  Gorilla  is  concerned,  really  does  very 
little  more  than  repeat,  on  his  own  authority,  the 
statements  of  Savage  and  of  Ford,  should  have  met 
with  so  much  and  such  bitter  opposition.  If  sub- 
traction be  made  of  what  was  known  before,  the 
sum  and  substance  of  what  M.  Du  Chaillu  has 
aSirmed    as    a    matter    of    his    own    observation 


72  THE  MAN-LIKE  APES.  i 

respecting  the  Gorilla,  is,  that,  in  advancing  to  the 
attack,  the  great  brute  beats  his  chest  with  his 
fists.  I  confess  I  see  nothing  very  improbable,  or 
very  much  worth  disputing  about,  in  this  state- 
ment. 

With  respect  to  the  other  man-like  Apes  of 
Africa,  M.  Du  Chaillu  tells  us  absolutely  nothing, 
of  his  own  knowledge,  regarding  the  common 
Chimpanzee;  but  he  informs  us  of  a  bald-headed 
species  or  variety,  the  nschiego  nibouve,  which 
builds  itself  a  shelter,  and  of  another  rare  kind 
with  a  comparatively  small  face,  large  facial  angle, 
and  peculiar  note,  resembling  "  Kooloo." 

As  the  Orang  shelters  itself  with  a  rough 
coverlet  of  leaves,  and  the  common  Chimpanzee, 
according  to  that  eminently  trustworthy  observer 
Dr.  Savage,  makes  a  sound  like  "  Whoo-whoo," — 
the  grounds  of  the  summary  repudiation  with 
which  M.  Du  Chaillu's  statements  on  these  mat- 
ters have  been  met  are  not  obvious. 

If  I  have  abstained  from  quoting  M.  Du 
Chaillu's  work,  then,  it  is  not  because  I  discern 
any  inherent  improbability  in  his  assertions  re- 
specting the  man-like  Apes;  nor  from  any  wish  to 
throw  suspicion  on  his  veracity;  but  because,  in 
my  opinion,  so  long  as  his  narrative  remains  in  its 
present  state  of  unexplained  and  apparently  in- 
explicable confusion,  it  has  no  claim  to  original  au- 
thority respecting  any  subject  whatsoever. 

It  may  be  truth,  but  it  is  not  evidence. 


African  Cannibalism  in  the  Sixteenth  Century. 

In  turning  over  Pigafetta's  version  of  the  narrative  of 
Lopez,  which  I  have  quoted  above,  I  came  upon  so  curious 
and  unexpected  an  anticipation,  by  some  two  centuries 
and  a  half,  of  one  of  the  most  startling  parts  of  M.  Du 
Chaillu's  narrative,  that  1  cannot  refrain  from  drawing 
attention  to  it  in  a  note,  although  1  must  confess  that  the 
subject  is  not  strictly  relevant  to  the  matter  in  hand. 

In  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  first  book  of  the  "  De- 
scriptio,"  "  Concerning  the  northern  part  of  the  King- 
dom of  Congo  and  its  boundaries,"  is  mentioned  a  people 
whose  king  is  called  "  Maniloango,"  and  who  live  under 
the  equator,  and  as  far  westward  as  Cape  Lopez.  This  ap- 
pears to  be  the  country  now  inhabited  by  the  Ogobai  and 
Bakalai  according  to  M.  Du  Chaillu. — "  Beyond  these 
dwell  another  people  called  *  Anziques,'  of  incredible  feroc- 
ity, for  they  eat  one  another,  sparing  neither  friends  nor 
relations." 

These  people  are  armed  with  small  bows  bound  tightly 
round  with  snake  skins,  and  strung  with  a  reed  or  rush. 
Their  arrows,  short  and  slender,  but  made  of  hard  wood, 
are  shot  with  great  rapidity.  They  have  iron  axes,  the 
handles  of  which  are  bound  round  with  snake  skins,  and 
swords  with  scabbards  of  the  same  material;  for  defen- 
sive armour  they  employ  elephant  hides.  They  cut  their 
skins  when  young,  so  as  to  produce  scars.  "  Their  butch- 
ers' shops  are  filled  with  human  flesh  instead  of  that  of 
oxen  or  sheep.     For  they  eat  the  enemies  whom  they 

73 


74 


AFRICAN  CANNIBALISM. 


Fig.  12. — Butcher's  Shop  of  the  Anziques  Anno  1598. 

take  in  battle.  They  fatten,  slay  and  devour  their  slaves 
also,  unless  they  think  they  shall  get  a  good  price  for 
them;  and,  moreover,  sometimes  for  weariness  of  life  or 
desire  of  glory  (for  they  think  it  a  great  thing  and  the 


1  AFRICAN  CAXXIBALISM.  Y5 

sign  of  a  generous  soul  to  despise  life),  or  for  love  of  their 
rulers,  offer  themselves  up  for  food." 

"  There  are  indeed  many  cannibals,  as  in  the  Eastern 
Indies  and  in  Brazil  and  elsewhere,  but  none  such  as 
these,  since  the  others  only  eat  their  enemies,  but  these 
their  own  blood  relations." 

The  careful  illustrators  of  Pigafetta  have  done  their 
best  to  enable  the  reader  to  realize  this  account  of  the 
"  Anziques,"  and  the  unexampled  butcher's  shop  repre- 
sented in  Fig.  12,  is  a  facsimile  of  part  of  their  Plate  XII. 

M.  Du  Chaillu's  account  of  the  Fans  accords  most 
singularly  with  what  Lopez  here  narrates  of  the  Anziques. 
He  speaks  of  their  small  crossbows  and  little  arrows,  of 
their  axes  and  knives,  "  ingeniously  sheathed  in  snake 
skins."  "  They  tattoo  themselves  more  than  any  other 
tribes  I  have  met  north  of  the  equator."  And  all  the 
world  knows  what  M.  Du  Chaillu  says  of  their  cannibal- 
ism— "  Presently  we  passed  a  woman  who  solved  all 
doubt.  She  bore  with  her  a  piece  of  the  thigh  of  a  human 
body,  just  as  we  should  go  to  market  and  carry  thence  a 
roast  or  steak."  M.  Du  Chaillu's  artist  cannot  generally 
be  accused  of  any  want  of  courage  in  embodying  the  state- 
ments of  his  author,  and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that,  with 
so  good  an  excuse,  he  has  not  furnished  us  with  a  fitting 
companion  to  the  sketch  of  the  brothers  De  Bry. 


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11. 

01^   THE   EELATIOXS   OF   MAN   TO    THE 
LOWER   ANIMALS. 

Multis  videri  potent,  majorem  esse  differentiam  Simise  et 
Hominis,  quam  diei  et  noctis;  verum  tamen  hi,  com- 
paratione  instituta  inter  summos  Europae  Heroes  et 
Hottentottes  ad  Caput  bonae  spei  degentes,  difficillime 
sibi  persuadebunt,  has  eosdem  habere  natales;  vel  si 
virginem  nobilem  aulicam,  maxime  comtam  et  hu- 
manissimam,  conferre  vellent  cum  homine  sylvestri  et 
sibi  relicto,  vix  augurari  possent,  huno  et  illam  ejus- 
dem  esse  speciei. — Linnwi  Amoenitates  Acad.  "  Anthro- 
pomorpha." 

The  question  of  questions  for  mankind — the 
problem  which  underlies  all  others,  and  is  more 
deeply  interesting  than  any  other — is  the  ascer- 
tainment of  the  place  which  Man  occupies  in  na- 
ture and  of  his  relations  to  the  universe  of  things. 
Whence  our  race  has  come;  what  are  the  limits 
of  our  power  over  nature,  and  of  nature's  power 
over  us;  to  what  goal  we  are  tending;  are  the 
problems  which  present  themselves  anew  and 
vith  undiminished  interest   to   every   man  born 

77 


78  MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

into  the  world.  Most  of  us,  shrinking  from  the 
difficulties  and  dangers  which  beset  the  seeker 
after  original  answers  to  these  riddles,  are  con- 
tented to  ignore  them  altogether,  or  to  smother 
the  investigating  spirit  under  the  feather-bed  of 
respected  and  respectable  tradition.  But,  in  every 
age,  one  or  two  restless  spirits,  blessed  with  that 
constructive  genius,  which  can  only  build  on  a 
secure  foundation,  or  cursed  with  the  spirit  of 
mere  scepticism,  are  unable  to  follow  in  the  well- 
worn  and  comfortable  track  of  their  forefathers 
and  contemporaries,  and  unmindful  of  thorns  and 
stumbling-blocks,  strike  out  into  paths  of  their 
own.  The  sceptics  end  in  the  infidelity  which 
asserts  the  problem  to  be  insoluble,  or  in  the  athe- 
ism which  denies  the  existence  of  any  orderly  pro- 
gress and  governance  of  things:  the  men  of  genius 
propound  solutions  which  grow  into  systems  of 
Theology  or  of  Philosophy,  or  veiled  in  musical 
language  which  suggests  more  than  it  asserts,  take 
the  shape  of  the  Poetry  of  an  epoch. 

Each  such  answer  to  the  great  question,  in- 
variably asserted  by  the  followers  of  its  pro- 
pounder,  if  not  by  himself,  to  be  complete  and 
final,  remains  in  high  authority  and  esteem,  it 
may  be  for  one  century,  or  it  may  be  for  twenty: 
but,  as  invariably,  Time  proves  each  reply  to  have 
been  a  mere  approximation  to  the  truth — tolerable 
chiefly  on  account  of  the  ignorance  of  those  by 
whom   it   was   accepted,   and   wholly   intolerable 


n  MENTAL  ECDYSES  OF  MAN.  79 

when  tested  by  the  larger  knowledge  of  their  suc- 
cessors. 

In  a  well-worn  metaphor,  a  parallel  is  drawn 
between  the  life  of  man  and  the  metamorphosis 
of  the  caterpillar  into  the  butterfly;  but  the  com- 
parison may  be  more  just  as  well  as  more  novel,  if 
for  its  former  term  we  take  the  mental  progress 
of  the  race.  History  shows  that  the  human  mind, 
fed  by  constant  accessions  of  knowledge,  periodi- 
cally grows  too  large  for  its  theoretical  coverings, 
and  bursts  them  asunder  to  appear  in  new  habili- 
ments, as  the  feeding  and  growing  grub,  at 
intervals,  casts  its  too  narrow  skin  and  assumes 
another,  itself  but  temporary.  Truly  the  imago 
state  of  Man  seems  to  be  terribly  distant,  but 
every  moult  is  a  step  gained,  and  of  such  there 
have  been  many. 

Since  the  revival  of  learning,  whereby  the 
Western  races  of  Europe  were  enabled  to  enter 
upon  that  progress  towards  true  knowledge,  which 
was  commenced  by  the  philosophers  of  Greece, 
but  was  almost  arrested  in  subsequent  long  ages 
of  intellectual  stagnation,  or.  at  most,  gyration, 
the  human  larva  has  been  feeding  vigorously,  and 
moulting  in  proportion.  A  skin  of  some  dimension 
was  cast  in  the  16th  century,  and  another  towards 
the  end  of  the  18th,  while,  within  the  last  fifty 
years,  the  extraordinary  growth  of  every  depart- 
ment of  physical  science  has  spread  among  us 
mental  food  of  so  nutritious  and  stimulating  a 


80    MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.     n 

character  that  a  new  ecdysis  seems  imminent. 
But  this  is  a  process  not  unusually  accompanied 
by  many  throes  and  some  sickness  and  debility,  or, 
it  may  be,  by  graver  disturbances;  so  that  every 
good  citizen  must  feel  bound  to  facilitate  the  pro- 
cess, and  even  if  he  have  nothing  but  a  scalpel  to 
work  withal,  to  ease  the  cracking  integument  to 
the  best  of  his  ability. 

In  this  duty  lies  my  excuse  for  the  publication 
of  these  essays.  For  it  will  be  admitted  that  some 
knowledge  of  man's  position  in  the  animate  world 
is  an  indispensable  preliminary  to  the  proper  un- 
derstanding of  his  relations  to  the  universe;  and 
this  again  resolves  itself,  in  the  long  run,  into  an 
inquiry  into  the  nature  and  the  closeness  of  the  ties 
which  connect  him  with  those  singular  creatures 
whose  history  *  has  been  sketched  in  the  preced- 
ing pages. 

The  importance  of  such  an  inquiry  is  indeed 
intuitively  manifest.  Brought  face  to  face  with 
these  blurred  copies  of  himself,  the  least  thought- 
ful of  men  is  conscious  of  a  certain  shock,  due  per- 
haps, not  so  much  to  disgust  at  the  aspect  of 
what  looks  like  an  insulting  caricature,  as  to  the 
awakening  of  a  sudden  and  profound  mistrust  of 
time-honoured  theories  and  strongly-rooted  preju- 
dices regarding  his  own  position  in   nature,  and 

*  It  will  he  understood  that,  in  the  preceding  Essay,  I 
have  selected  for  notice  from  the  vast  mass  of  papers 
which  have  been  written  upon  the  man-like  Apes,  only 
those  which  seem  to  me  to  be  of  special  moment. 


n  DEVELOPMENT.  81 

his  relations  to  the  under-world  of  life;  while  that 
which  remains  a  dim  suspicion  for  the  unthinking, 
becomes  a  vast  argument,  fraught  with  the  deep- 
est consequences,  for  all  who  are  acquainted  with 
the  recent  progress  of  the  anatomical  and  physio- 
logical sciences. 

I  now  propose  briefly  to  unfold  that  argument, 
and  to  set  forih,  in  a  form  intelligible  to  those 
who  possess  no  special  acquaintance  with  ana- 
tomical science,  the  chief  facts  upon  which  all  con- 
clusions respecting  the  nature  and  the  extent  of 
the  bonds  which  connect  man  with  the  brute  world 
must  be  based:  I  shall  then  indicate  the  one  im- 
mediate conclusion  which,  in  my  judgment,  is 
justified  by  those  facts,  and  I  shall  finally  discuss 
the  bearing  of  that  conclusion  upon  the  hypoth- 
eses which  have  been  entertained  respecting  the 
Origin  of  Man. 

The  facts  to  which  I  would  first  direct  the 
reader's  attention,  though  ignored  by  many  of  the 
professed  instructors  of  the  public  mind,  are  easy 
of  demonstration  and  are  universally  agreed  to  by 
men  of  science;  while  their  significance  is  so  great, 
that  whoso  has  duly  pondered  over  them  will,  I 
think,  find  little  to  startle  him  in  the  other  reve- 
lations of  Biology.  I  refer  to  those  facts  which 
have  been  made  known  by  the  study  of  Develop- 
ment. 

It  is  a  truth  of  very  wide,  if  not  of  universal, 
170 


82    MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.     n 

application,  that  every  living  creature  commences 
its  existence  under  a  form  different  from,  and 
simpler  than,  that  which  it  eventually  attains. 

The  oak  is  a  more  complex  thing  than  the 
little  rudimentary  plant  contained  in  the  acorn; 
the  caterpillar  is  more  complex  than  the  egg;  the 
butterfly  than  the  caterpillar;  and  each  of  these 
beings,  in  passing  from  its  rudimentary  to  its 
perfect  condition,  runs  through  a  series  of  changes, 
the  sum  of  which  is  called  its  Development.  In 
the  higher  animals  these  changes  are  extremely 
complicated;  but,  within  the  last  half  century, 
the  labours  of  such  men  as  Von  Baer,  Kathke, 
Eeichert,  Bischoff,  and  Remak,  have  almost  com- 
pletely unravelled  them,  so  that  the  successive 
stages  of  development  which  are  exhibited  by  a 
Dog,  for  example,  are  now  as  well  known  to  the 
embryologist  as  are  the  steps  of  the  metamor- 
phosis of  the  silk-worm  moth  to  the  school-boy. 
It  will  be  useful  to  consider  with  attention  the 
nature  and  the  order  of  the  stages  of  canine  de- 
velopment, as  an  example  of  the  process  in  the 
higher  animals  generally. 

The  dog,  like  all  animals,  save  the  very  lowest 
(and  further  inquiries  may  not  improbably  remove 
the  apparent  exception),  commences  its  existence 
as  an  egg:  as  a  body  which  is,  in  every  sense,  as 
much  an  egg  as  that  of  a  hen,  but  is  devoid  of 
that  accumulation  of  nutritive  matter  which 
confers  upon  the  bird's  egg  its  exceptional  size  and 


THE  DOG'S  EGG. 


83 


domestic  utility;  and  wants  the  shell,  which  would 
not  only  be  useless  to  an  animal  incubated  within 
the  body  of  its  parent,  but  would  cut  it  off  from 
access  to  the  source  of  that  nutriment  which  the 
young  creature  requires,  but  which  the  minute 
egg  of  the  mammal  does  not  contain  within  itself. 


Fig.  13. — A,  Egg  of  the  Dog,  with  the  vitelline  mem- 
brane burst,  so  as  to  give  exit  to  the  yelk,  the  gemiinal 
vesicle  {a),  and  its  included  spot  (ft).  B.  C.  D.  E.  F.  Suc- 
cessive changes  of  the  yelk  indicated  in  the  text.  After 
BisehoflF. 

The  Dog's  egg  is,  in  fact,  a  little  spheroidal 
bag  (Fig.  13),  formed  of  a  delicate  transparent 
membrane  called  the  vitelline  membrane,  and  about 
Yj-u-th  to  Y^th  of  an  inch  in  diameter.  It  con- 
tains a  mass  of  viscid  nutritive  matter — the  yelk 


84         MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  ii 

— within  which  is  enclosed  a  second  much  more 
delicate  spheroidal  bag,  called  the  germinal  vesicle 
(a).  In  this,  lastly,  lies  a  more  solid  rounded  body, 
termed  the  germinal  spot  (6). 

The  egg,  or  Ovum,  is  originally  formed  within 
a  gland,  from  which,  in  due  season,  it  becomes 
detached,  and  passes  into  the  living  chamber  fitted 
for  its  protection  and  maintenance  during  the  pro- 
tracted process  of  gestation.  Here,  when  sub- 
jected to  the  required  conditions,  this  minute  and 
apparently  insignificant  particle  of  living  matter 
becomes  animated  by  a  new  and  mysterious  activ- 
ity. The  germinal  vesicle  and  spot  cease  to  be 
discernible  (their  precise  fate  being  one  of  the  yet 
unsolved  problems  of  embryology),  but  the  yelk 
becomes  circumferentially  indented,  as  if  an  in- 
visible knife  had  been  drawn  round  it,  and  thus 
appears  divided  into  two  hemispheres  (Fig. 
13,  C). 

By  the  repetition  of  this  process  in  various 
planes,  these  hemispheres  become  subdivided,  so 
that  four  segments  are  produced  (D);  and  these, 
in  like  manner,  divide  and  subdivide  again,  until 
the  whole  yelk  is  converted  into  a  mass  of 
granules,  each  of  which  consists  of  a  minute 
spheroid  of  yelk-substance,  inclosing  a  central 
particle,  the  so-called  nucleus  (F).  Nature,  by 
this  process,  has  attained  much  the  same  result 
as  that  which  a  human  artificer  arrives  at  by  his 
operations  in  a  brick-field.     She  takes  the  rough 


n  THE  CELLULAR  EMBRYO.  85 

plastic  material  of  the  yelk  and  breaks  it  up  into 
well-shaped  tolerably  even-sized  masses — handy 
for  building  up  into  any  part  of  the  living 
edifice. 

Next,  the  mass  of  organic  bricks,  or  cells  as 
they  are  technically  called,  thus  formed,  acquires 
an  orderly  arrangement,  becoming  converted  into 
a  hollow  spheroid  with  double  walls.  Then,  upon 
one  side  of  this  spheroid,  appears  a  thickening, 
and,  by  and  bye,  in  the  centre  of  the  area  of  thick- 
ening, a  straight  shallow  groove  (Fig.  l-i,  A) 
marks  the  central  line  of  the  edifice  which  is  to 
be  raised,  or,  in  other  words,  indicates  the  posi- 
tion of  the  middle  line  of  the  body  of  the  future 
dog.  The  substance  bounding  the  groove  on  each 
side  next  rises  up  into  a  fold,  the  rudiment  of  the 
side  wall  of  that  long  cavity,  which  will  eventu- 
ally lodge  the  spinal  marrow  and  the  brain;  and 
in  the  floor  of  this  chamber  appears  a  solid  cellu- 
lar cord,  the  so-called  notochord.  One  end  of  the 
enclosed  cavity  dilates  to  form  the  head  (Fig.  14, 
B),  the  other  remains  narrow,  and  eventually  be- 
comes the  tail;  the  side  walls  of  the  body  are 
fashioned  out  of  the  downward  continuation  of 
the  walls  of  the  groove;  and  from  them,  by  and 
bye,  grow  out  little  buds  which,  by  degrees,  as- 
sume the  shape  of  limbs.  Watching  the  fashion- 
ing process  stage  by  stage,  one  is  forcibly  reminded 
of  the  modeller  in  clay.  Every  part,  every  organ, 
is  at  first,  as  it   were  pinched  up   rudely,   and 


86 


MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS. 


sketched  out  in  the  rough;  then  shaped  more  accu- 
rately; and  only,  at  last,  receives  the  touches 
which  stamp  its  final  character. 

Thus,  at  length,   the   young  puppy  assumes 
such  a  form  as  is  shown  in  Fig.  14,  C.     In  this 


Fig.  14. — A.  Earliest  rudiment  of  the  Dog.  B.  Rudi- 
ment further  advanced,  showing  the  foundations  of  the 
head,  tail,  and  vertebral  column.  C.  The  very  young 
puppy,  with  attached  ends  of  the  yelk-sac  and  allantois, 
and  invested  in  the  amnion. 

condition  is  has  a  disproportionately  large  head, 
as  dissimilar  to  that  of  a  dog  as  the  bud-like  limbs 
are  unlike  his  legs. 

The  remains  of  the  yelk,  which  have  not  yet 
been  applied  to  the  nutrition  and  growth  of  the 


n  FCETAL  APPENDAGES.  87 

young  animal,  are  contained  in  a  sac  attached  to 
the  rudimentary  intestine,  and  termed  the  yelk 
sac,  or  umbilical  vesicle.  Two  membranous  bags, 
intended  to  subserve  respectively  the  protection 
and  nutrition  of  the  young  creature,  have  been 
developed  from  the  skin  and  from  the  under  and 
hinder  surface  of  the  body;  the  former,  the  so- 
called  amnion,  is  a  sac  filled  with  fluid,  which 
invests  the  whole  body  of  the  embryo,  and  plays 
the  part  of  a  sort  of  water-bed  for  it;  the  other, 
termed  the  allantois,  grows  out,  loaded  with 
blood-vessels,  from  the  ventral  region,  and  eventu- 
ally applying  itself  to  the  walls  of  the  cavity,  in 
which  the  developing  organism  is  contained,  en- 
ables these  vessels  to  become  the  channel  by  which 
the  stream  of  nutriment,  required  to  supply  the 
wants  of  the  offspring,  is  furnished  to  it  by  the 
parent. 

The  structure  which  is  developed  by  the  inter- 
lacement of  the  vessels  of  the  offspring  with  those 
of  the  parent,  and  by  means  of  which  the  former 
is  enabled  to  receive  nourishment  and  to  get  rid 
of  effete  matters,  is  termed  the  Placenta. 

It  would  be  tedious,  and  it  is  unnecessary  for 
my  present  purpose,  to  trace  the  process  of  de- 
velopment further;  suffice  it  to  say,  that,  by  a  long 
and  gradual  series  of  changes,  the  rudiment  here 
depicted  and  described,  becomes  a  puppy,  is  born, 
and  then,  by  still  slower  and  less  perceptible  steps, 
passes  into  the  adult  Dog. 


88  MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  ii 

There  is  not  much  apparent  resemblance  be- 
tween a  barn-door  Fowl  and  the  Dog  who  protects 
the  farm-yard.  Nevertheless  the  student  of  de- 
velopment finds,  not  only  that  the  chick  com- 
mences its  existence  as  an  egg,  primarily  identical, 
in  all  essential  respects,  with  that  of  the  Dog, 
but  that  the  yelk  of  this  egg  undergoes  division 
— that  the  primitive  groove  arises,  and  that  the 
contiguous  parts  of  the  germ  are  fashioned,  by 
precisely  similar  methods,  into  a  young  chick, 
which,  at  one  stage  of  its  existence,  is  so  like  the 
nascent  Dog,  that  ordinary  inspection  would 
hardly  distinguish  the  two. 

The  history  of  the  development  of  any  other 
vertebrate  animal,  Lizard,  Snake,  Frog,  or  Fish, 
tells  the  same  story.  There  is  always,  to  begin 
with,  an  egg  having  the  same  essential  structure 
as  that  of  the  Dog:— the  yelk  of  that  egg  always 
undero-oes  division,  or  segmentation  as  it  is  often 
called:  the  ultimate  products  of  that  segmenta- 
tion constitute  the  building  materials  for  the  body 
of  the  young  animal;  and  this  is  built  up  round  a 
primitive  groove,  in  the  floor  of  which  a  notochord 
is  developed.  Furthermore,  there  is  a  period  in 
which  the  young  of  all  these  animals  resemble 
one  another,  not  merely  in  outward  form,  but  in 
all  essentials  of  structure,  so  closely,  that  the  dif- 
ferences between  them  are  inconsiderable,  while, 
in  their  subsequent  course  they  diverge  more  an^ 


n  DEVELOPMENT  OF  MAN.  89 

more  widely  from  one  another.  And  it  is  a  general 
law,  that,  the  more  closely  any  animals  resemble 
one  another  in  adult  structure,  the  longer  and  the 
more  intimately  do  their  embryos  resemble  one  an- 
other: so  that,  for  example,  the  embryos  of  a 
Snake  and  of  a  Lizard  remain  like  one  another 
longer  than  do  those  of  a  Snake  and  of  a  Bird; 
and  the  embryo  of  a  Dog  and  of  a  Cat  remain 
like  one  another  for  a  far  longer  period  than  do 
those  of  a  Dog  and  a  Bird;  or  of  a  Dog  and  an 
Opossum;  or  even  than  those  of  a  Dog  and  a 
Monkey. 

Thus  the  study  of  development  affords  a  clear 
test  of  closeness  of  structural  affinity,  and  one 
turns  with  impatience  to  inquire  what  results  are 
yielded  by  the  study  of  the  development  of  Man. 
Is  he  something  apart?  Does  he  originate  in  a 
totally  different  way  from  Dog,  Bird,  Frog,  and 
Fish,  thus  justifying  those  who  assert  him  to  have 
no  place  in  nature  and  no  real  affinity  with  the 
lower  world  of  animal  life?  Or  does  he  originate 
in  a  similar  germ,  pass  through  the  same  slow  and 
gradually  progressive  modifications,  depend  on 
the  same  contrivances  for  protection  and  nutri- 
tion, and  finally  enter  the  world  by  the  help  of  the 
same  mechanism?  The  reply  is  not  doubtful  for  a 
moment,  and  has  not  been  doubtful  any  time  these 
thirty  years.  Without  question,  the  mode  of 
origin  and  the  early  stages  of  the  development  of 
man  are  identical  with  those  of  the  animals  im- 


90 


MAN  AND  THE  LOW^R  ANIMALS. 


mediately  below  him  in  the  scale: — without  a 
doubt,  in  these  respects,  he  is  far  nearer  the  Apes, 
than  the  Apes  are  to  the  Dog. 

The  Human  ovum  is  about  y^th  of  an  inch 
in  diameter,  and  might  be  described  in  the  same 
terms  as  that  of  the  Dog,  so  that  I  need  only  refer 


Fig.  15. — A.  Human  ovum  (after  Kolliker).  a.  ger- 
minal vesicle,  b.  germinal  spot.  B.  A  very  early  condi- 
tion of  Man,  with  yelk-sac,  allantois  and  amnion  (origi- 
nal). C.  A  more  advanced  stage  (after  Kolliker),  com- 
pare Fig.  14,  C. 

to  the  figure  illustrative  (15  A)  of  its  structure. 
It  leaves  the  organ  in  which  it  is  formed  in  a 
similar  fashion  and  enters  the  organic  chamber 
prepared  for  its  reception  in  the  same  way,  the 
conditions  of  its  development  being  in  all  respects 
the  same.  It  has  not  yet  been  possible  (and  only 
by  some  rare  chance  can  it  ever  be  possible)  to 


n  DEVELOPMENT  OF  MAN.  91 

study  the  human  ovum  in  so  early  a  develop- 
mental stage  as  that  of  yelk  division,  but  there 
is  every  reason  to  conclude  that  the  changes  it 
undergoes  are  identical  with  those  exhibited  by 
the  ova  of  other  vertebrated  animals;  for  the 
formative  materials  of  which  the  rudimentary  hu- 
man body  is  composed,  in  the  earliest  conditions 
in  which  it  has  been  observed,  are  the  same  as 
those  of  other  animals.  Some  of  these  earliest 
stages  are  figured  above  and,  as  will  be  seen,  they 
are  strictly  comparable  to  the  very  early  states  of 
the  Dog;  the  marvellous  correspondence  between 
the  two  which  is  kept  up,  even  for  some  time,  as 
development  advances,  becoming  apparent  by  the 
simple  comparison  of  the  figures  with  those  on 
page  86. 

Indeed,  it  is  very  long  before  the  body  of  the 
young  human  being  can  be  readily  discriminated 
from  that  of  the  young  puppy;  but,  at  a  tolerably 
early  period,  the  two  become  distinguishable  by 
the  different  form  of  their  adjuncts,  the  yelk-sac 
and  the  allantois.  The  former,  in  the  Dog,  be- 
comes long  and  spindle-shaped,  while  in  Man  it 
remains  spherical:  the  latter,  in  the  Dog,  attains 
an  extremely  large  size,  and  the  vascular  processes 
which  are  developed  from  it  and  eventually  give 
rise  to  the  formation  of  the  placenta  (taking  root, 
as  it  were,  in  the  parental  organism,  so  as  to  draw 
nourishment  therefrom,  as  the  root  of  a  tree  ex- 
tracts it  from  the  soil)  are  arranged  in  an  en- 


92  MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

circling  zone,  while  in  Man,  the  allantois  remains 
comparatively  small,  and  its  vascular  rootlets  are 
eventually  restricted  to  one  disk-like  spot.  Hence, 
while  the  placenta  of  the  Dog  is  like  a  girdle, 
that  of  Man  has  the  cake-like  form,  indicated  by 
the  name  of  the  organ. 

But,  exactly  in  those  respects  in  which  the 
developing  Man  differs  from  the  Dog,  he  resem- 
bles the  ape,  which,  like  man,  has  a  spheroidal 
yelk-sac  and  a  discoidal,  sometimes  partially  lobed, 
placenta.  So  that  it  is  only  quite  in  the  later 
stages  of  development  that  the  young  human  be- 
ing presents  marked  differences  from  the  young 
ape,  while  the  latter  departs  as  much  from  the 
dog  in  its  development,  as  the  man  does. 

Startling  as  the  last  assertion  may  appear  to 
be,  it  is  demonstrably  true,  and  it  alone  appears 
to  me  sufficient  to  place  beyond  all  doubt  the 
structural  unity  of  man  with  the  rest  of  the  ani- 
mal world,  and  more  particularly  and  closely  with 
the  apes. 

Thus,  identical  in  the  physical  processes  by 
which  he  originates — identical  in  the  early  stages 
of  his  formation — identical  in  the  mode  of  his 
nutrition  before  and  after  birth,  with  the  animals 
which  lie  immediately  below  him  in  the  scale — 
Man,  if  his  adult  and  perfect  structure  be  com- 
pared with  theirs,  exhibits,  as  might  be  expected, 
a  marvellous  likeness  of  organization.    He  resem- 


u  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  MAN.  93 

bles  them  as  they  resemble  one  another — he  dif- 
fers from  them  as  they  differ  from  one  another. 
— And,  though  these  differences  and  resemblances 
cannot  be  weighed  and  measured,  their  value  may 
be  readily  estimated;  the  scale  or  standard  of 
judgment,  touching  that  value  being  afforded  and 
expressed  by  the  system  of  classification  of  ani- 
mals now  current  among  zoologists. 

A  careful  study  of  the  resemblances  and  dif- 
ferences presented  by  animals  has,  in  fact,  led 
naturalists  to  arrange  them  into  groups,  or 
assemblages,  all  the  members  of  each  group 
presenting  a  certain  amount  of  definable  resem- 
blance, and  the  number  of  points  of  similarity  be- 
ing smaller  as  the  group  is  larger  and  vice  versa. 
Thus,  all  creatures  which  agree  only  in  present- 
ing the  few  distinctive  marks  of  animality  form 
the  Kingdom  Animalia.  The  numerous  animals 
which  agree  only  in  possessing  the  special  char- 
acters of  Vertebrates  form  one  Sub-kingdom  of  this 
Kingdom.  Then  the  Sub-kingdom  Vertebkata 
is  subdivided  into  the  five  Classes,  Fishes,  Am- 
phibians, Reptiles,  Birds,  and  Mammals,  and  these 
into  smaller  groups  called  Orders;  these  into 
Families  and  Genera;  while  the  last  are  finally 
broken  up  into  the  smallest  assemblages,  which 
are  distinguished  by  the  possession  of  constant, 
not-sexual,  characters.  These  ultimate  groups  are 
Species. 

Every  year  tends  to  bring  about  a  greater  uni- 


94         MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

formity  of  opinion  throughout  the  zoological 
world  as  to  the  limits  and  characters  of  these 
groups,  great  and  small.  At  present,  for  example, 
no  one  has  the  least  doubt  regarding  the  charac- 
ters of  the  classes  Mammalia,  Aves,  or  Reptilia; 
nor  does  the  question  arise  whether  any  thor- 
oughly well-known  animal  should  be  placed  in 
one  class  or  the  other.  Again,  there  is  a  very 
general  agreement  respecting  the  characters  and 
limits  of  the  orders  of  Mammals,  and  as  to  the 
animals  which  are  structurally  necessitated  to 
take  a  place  in  one  or  another  order. 

No  one  doubts,  for  example,  that  the  Sloth 
and  the  Ant-eater,  the  Kangaroo  and  the  Opos- 
sum, the  Tiger  and  the  Badger,  the  Tapir  and 
the  Rhinoceros,  are  respectively  members  of  the 
same  orders.  These  successive  pairs  of  animals 
may,  and  some  do,  differ  from  one  another  im- 
mensely, in  such  matters  as  the  proportions  and 
structure  of  their  limbs;  the  number  of  their 
dorsal  and  lumbar  vertebrae;  the  adaptation  of 
their  frames  to  climbing,  leaping,  or  running;  the 
number  and  form  of  their  teeth;  and  the  char- 
acters of  their  skulls  and  of  the  contained  brain. 
But,  with  all  these  differences,  they  are  so  closely 
connected  in  all  the  more  important  and  funda- 
mental characters  of  their  organization,  and  so 
distinctly  separated  by  these  same  characters  from 
other  animals,  that  zoologists  find  it  necessary  to 
group  them  together  as  members  of  one  order. 


n  THE  CLASSIFICATION  OF  MAN.  95 

And  if  any  new  animal  were  discovered,  and  were 
found  to  present  no  greater  difference  from  the 
Kangaroo  or  from  the  Opossum,  for  example,  than 
these  animals  do  from  one  another,  the  zoologist 
would  not  only  be  logically  compelled  to  rank  it 
in  the  same  order  with  these,  but  he  would  not 
think  of  doing  otherwise. 

Bearing  this  obvious  course  of  zoological  rea- 
soning in  mind,  let  us  endeavour  for  a  moment  to 
disconnect  our  thinking  selves  from  the  mask  of 
humanity;  let  us  imagine  ourselves  scientific  Sa- 
turnians,  if  you  will,  fairly  acquainted  with  such 
animals  as  now  inhabit  the  Earth,  and  employed 
in  discussing  the  relations  they  bear  to  a  new 
and  singular  "  erect  and  featherless  biped,"  which 
some  enterprising  traveller,  overcoming  the  dif- 
ficulties of  space  and  gravitation,  has  brought 
from  that  distant  planet  for  our  inspection,  well 
preserved,  may  be,  in  a  cask  of  rum.  We  should 
all,  at  once,  agree  upon  placing  him  among  the 
mammalian  vertebrates;  and  his  lower  jaw,  his 
molars,  and  his  brain,  would  leave  no  room  for 
doubting  the  systematic  position  of  the  new  genus 
among  those  mammals,  whose  young  are  nour- 
ished during  gestation  by  means  of  a  placenta,  or 
what  are  called  the  "  placental  mammals." 

Further,  the  most  superficial  study  would  at 
once  convince  us  that,  among  the  orders  of 
placental  mammals,  neither  the  Whales,  nor  the 
hoofed  creatures,  nor  the  Sloths  and  Ant-eaters, 


96  MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

nor  the  carnivorous  Cats,  Dogs,  and  Bears,  still 
less  the  Eodent  Rats  and  Rabbits,  or  the  Insectiv- 
orous Moles  and  Hedgehogs,  or  the  Bats,  could 
claim  our  Homo,  as  one  of  themselves. 

There  would  remain  then  but  one  order  for 
comparison,  that  of  the  Apes  (using  the  word  in 
its  broadest  sease),  and  the  question  for  discussion 
would  narrow  itself  to  this — is  Man  so  different 
from  any  of  these  Apes  that  he  must  form  an 
order  by  himself?  Or  does  he  differ  less  from 
them  than  they  differ  from  one  another,  and 
hence  must  take  his  place  in  the  same  order  with 
them? 

Being  happily  free  from  all  real,  or  imaginary, 
personal  interest  in  the  results  of  the  inquiry  thus 
set  afoot,  we  should  proceed  to  weigh  the  argu- 
ments on  one  side  and  on  the  other,  with  as  much 
judicial  calmness  as  if  the  question  related  to  a 
new  Opossum.  We  should  endeavour  to  ascer- 
tain, without  seeking  either  to  magnify  or  dimin- 
ish them,  all  the  characters  by  which  our  new 
Mammal  differed  from  the  Apes;  and  if  we  found 
that  these  were  of  less  structural  value  than  those 
which  distinguish  certain  members  of  the  Ape 
order  from  others  universally  admitted  to  be  of 
the  same  order,  we  should  undoubtedlv  place  the 
newly  discovered  tellurian  genus  with  them. 

I  now  proceed  to  detail  the  facts  which  seem 
to  me  to  leave  us  no  choice  but  to  adopt  the  last- 
mentioned  course. 


n  CLASSIFICATION:  GORILLA.  97 

It  is  quite  certain  tliat  the  Ape  which  most 
nearly  approaches  man,  in  the  totality  of  its 
organisation,  is  either  the  Chimpanzee  or  the 
Gorilla;  and  as  it  makes  no  practical  difEerence, 
for  the  purposes  of  my  present  argument,  which 
is  selected  for  comparison,  on  the  one  hand,  with 
Man,  and  on  the  other  hand,  with  the  rest  of  the 
Primates,*  I  shall  select  the  latter  (so  far  as  its 
organisation  is  known) — as  a  brute  now  so  cele- 
brated in  prose  and  verse,  that  all  must  have 
heard  of  him,  and  have  formed  some  conception 
of  his  appearance.  I  shall  take  up  as  many  of 
the  most  important  points  of  difference  between 
man  and  this  remarkable  creature,  as  the  space 
at  my  disposal  will  allow  me  to  discuss,  and  the 
necessities  of  the  argument  demand;  and  I  shall 
inquire  into  the  value  and  magnitude  of  these 
differences,  when  placed  side  by  side  with  those 
which  separate  the  Gorilla  from  other  animals  of 
the  same  order. 

In  the  general  proportions  of  the  body  and 
limbs  there  is  a  remarkable  difference  between 
the  Gorilla  and  Man,  which  at  once  strikes  the 
eye.  The  Gorilla's  brain-case  is  smaller,  its  trunk 
larger,  its  lower  limbs  shorter,  its  upper  limbs 
longer  in  proportion  than  those  of  Man. 

I  find  that  the  v^erieDral  column  of  a  full-grown 

*  We  are  not  at  present  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
the  brain  of  the  Gorilla,  and  therefore,  in  discussing  cere- 
bral characters,  I  shall  take  that  of  the  Chimpanzee  as 
my  highest  term  among  the  Apes. 

171 


98         MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

Gorilla,  in  the  Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons,  measures  27  inches  along  its  anterior 
curvature,  from  the  upper  edge  of  the  atlas,  or 
first  vertebra  of  the  neck,  to  the  lower  extremity 
of  the  sacrum;  that  the  arm,  without  the  hand,  is 
31^  inches  long;  that  the  leg,  without  the  foot,  is 
26^  inches  long;  that  the  hand  is  9f  inches  long; 
the  foot  11:^  inches  long. 

In  other  words,  taking  the  length  of  the  spinal 
column  as  100,  the  arm  equals  115,  the  leg  96, 
the  hand  36,  and  the  foot  41. 

In  the  skeleton  of  a  male  Bosjesman,  in  the 
same  collection,  the  proportions,  by  the  same  meas- 
urement, to  the  spinal  column,  taken  as  100,  are — 
the  arm  78,  the  leg  110,  the  hand  26,  and  the  foot 
32.  In  a  woman  of  the  same  race  the  arm  is 
83,  and  the  leg  120,  the  hand  and  foot  remaining 
the  same.  In  a  European  skeleton  I  find  the  arm 
to  be  80,  the  leg  117,  the  hand  26,  the  foot  35. 

Thus  the  leg  is  not  so  different  as  it  looks  at 
first  sight,  in  its  proportion  to  the  spine  in  the 
Gorilla  and  in  the  Man — being  very  slightly 
shorter  than  the  spine  in  the  former,  and  between 
-jJg-  and  ^  longer  than  the  spine  in  the  latter.  The 
foot  is  longer  and  the  hand  much  longer  in  the 
Gorilla;  but  the  great  difference  is  caused  by  the 
arms,  which  are  very  much  longer  than  the  spine 
in  the  Gorilla,  very  much  shorter  than  the  spine 
in  the  Man. 

The  question  now  arises  how  are  the  other 


n  GORILLA   AND  OTHER  APES.  99 

Apes  related  to  the  Gorilla  in  these  respects — 
taking  the  length  of  the  spine,  measured  in  the 
same  way,  at  100.  In  an  adult  Chimpanzee,  the 
arm  is  only  96,  the  leg  90,  the  hand  43,  the  foot  39 
— so  that  the  hand  and  the  leg  depart  more  from 
the  human  proportion  and  the  arm  less,  while  the 
foot  is  about  the  same  as  in  the  Gorilla. 

In  the  Orang,  the  arms  are  very  much  longer 
than  in  the  Gorilla  (122),  while  the  legs  are 
shorter  (88);  the  foot  is  longer  than  the  hand  (52 
and  48),  and  both  are  much  longer  in  proportion 

to  the  spine. 

In  the  other  man-like  Apes  again,  the  Gibbons, 
these  proportions  are  still  further  altered;  the 
length  of  the  arms  being  to  that  of  the  spinal  col- 
umn as  19  to  11;  while  the  legs  are  also  a  third 
longer  than  the  spinal  column,  so  as  to  be  longer 
than  in  Man,  instead  of  shorter.  The  hand  is  half 
as  long  as  the  spinal  column,  and  the  foot,  shorter 
than  the  hand,  is  about  -^ths  of  the  length  of  the 
spinal  column. 

Thus  Hylobates  is  as  much  longer  in  the  arms 
than  the  Gorilla,  as  the  Gorilla  is  longer  in  the 
arms  than  Man;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
as  much  longer  in  the  legs  than  the  Man,  as  the 
Man  is  longer  in  the  legs  than  the  Gorilla,  so  that 
it  contains  within  itself  the  extremest  deviations 
from  the  average  length  of  both  pairs  of  limbs.* 

•See  the  figures  of  the  skeletons  of  four  anthropoid 
apes  and  of  man,  drawn  to  scale,  p.  76, 


100       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

The  Mandrill  presents  a  middle  condition,  the 
arms  and  legs  being  nearly  equal  in  length,  and 
both  being  shorter  than  the  spinal  column;  while 
hand  and  foot  have  nearly  the  same  proportions  to 
one  another  and  to  the  spine,  as  in  Man. 

In  the  Spider  Monkey  (Ateles)  the  leg  is  longer 
than  the  spine,  and  the  arm  than  the  leg;  and, 
finally,  in  that  remarkable  Lemurine  form,  the 
Indri  (Lichanotus),  the  leg  is  about  as  long  as  the 
spinal  column,  while  the  arm  is  not  more  than  -i^ 
of  its  length;  the  hand  having  rather  less  and  the 
foot  rather  more,  than  one  third  the  length  of  the 
spinal  column. 

These  examples  might  be  greatly  multiplied, 
but  they  suffice  to  show  that,  in  whatever  propor- 
tion of  its  limbs  the  Gorilla  differs  from  Man,  the 
other  Apes  depart  still  more  widely  from  the  Go- 
rilla and  that,  consequently,  such  differences  of 
proportion  can  have  no  ordinal  value. 

We  may  next  consider  the  differences  presented 
by  the  trunk,  consisting  of  the  vertebral  column, 
or  backbone,  and  the  ribs  and  pelvis,  or  bony  hip- 
basin,  which  are  connected  with  it,  in  Man  and  in 
the  Gorilla  respectively. 

In  Man,  in  consequence  partly  of  the  disposi- 
tion of  the  articular  surfaces  of  the  vertebrae,  and 
largely  of  the  elastic  tension  of  some  of  the  fibrous 
bands,  or  ligaments,  the  spinal  column,  as  a  whole, 
has  an  elegant  S-like  curvature,  being  convex  for- 


n  MAN  AND  GORILLA.  101 

wards  in  the  neck,  concave  in  the  back,  convex  in 
the  loins,  or  lumbar  region,  and  concave  again  in 
the  sacral  region;  an  arrangement  which  gives 
much  elasticity  to  the  whole  backbone,  and  dimin- 
ishes the  jar  communicated  to  the  spine,  and 
through  it  to  the  head,  by  locomotion  in  the  erect 
position. 

Furthermore,  under  ordinary  circumstances, 
Man  has  seven  vertebrae  in  his  neck,  which  are 
called  cervical;  twelve  succeed  these,  bearing  ribs 
and  forming  the  upper  part  of  the  back,  whence 
they  are  termed  dorsal;  five  lie  in  the  loins,  bear- 
ing no  distinct,  or  free,  ribs,  and  are  called  lumbar; 
five,  united  together  into  a  great  bone,  excavated 
in  front,  solidly  wedged  in  between  the  hip  bones, 
to  form  the  back  of  the  pelvis,  and  known  by  the 
name  of  the  sacrum,  succeed  these;  and  finally, 
three  or  four  little  more  or  less  movable  bones,  so 
small  as  to  be  insignificant,  constitute  the  coccyx 
or  rudimentary  tail. 

In  the  Gorilla,  the  vertebral  column  is  similar- 
ly divided  into  cervical,  dorsal,  lumbar,  sacral,  and 
coccygeal  vertebra?,  and  the  total  number  of  cer- 
vical and  dorsal  vertebrae,  taken  together,  is  the 
same  as  in  Man;  but  the  development  of  a  pair  of 
ribs  to  the  first  lumbar  vertebra,  which  is  an  ex- 
ceptional occurrence  in  Man,  is  the  rule  in  the 
Gorilla;  and  hence,  as  lumbar  are  distinguished 
from  dorsal  vertebrae  only  by  the  presence  or  ab- 
sence of  free  ribs,  the  seventeen  "  dorso-lumbar  '* 


102       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

vertebrae  of  the  Gorilla  are  divided  into  thirteen 
dorsal  and  four  lumbar,  while  in  Man  they  are 
twelve  dorsal  and  five  lumbar. 

Not  only,  however,  does  Man  occasionally  pos- 
sess thirteen  pair  of  ribs,*  but  the  Gorilla  some- 
times has  fourteen  pairs,  while  an  Orang-Utan 
skeleton  in  the  Museum  of  the  Koyal  College  of 
Surgeons  has  twelve  dorsal  and  five  lumbar  ver- 
tebrae, as  in  Man.  Cuvier  notes  the  same  number 
in  a  Hylobates.  On  the  other  hand,  among  the 
lower  Apes,  many  possess  twelve  dorsal  and  six  or 
seven  lumbar  vertebrae;  the  Douroucouli  has  four- 
teen dorsal  and  eight  lumbar,  and  a  Lemur 
(Stenops  tardigradus)  has  fifteen  dorsal  and  nine 
lumbar  vertebrae. 

The  vertebral  column  of  the  Gorilla,  as  a  whole, 
differs  from  that  of  Man  in  the  less  marked  char- 
acter of  its  curves,  especially  in  the  slighter  con- 
vexity of  the  lumbar  region.  Nevertheless,  the 
curves  are  present,  and  are  quite  obvious  in  young 
skeletons  of  the  Gorilla  and  Chimpanzee  which 
have  been  prepared  without  removal  of  the  liga- 
ments.    In  young  Orangs  similarly  preserved  on 

•  "  More  than  once,"  says  Peter  Camper,  "  have  I  met 
with  more  than  six  lumbar  vertebrae  in  man.  .  .  .  Once  I 
found  thirteen  ribs  and  four  lumbar  vertebrae."  Fallopius 
noted  thirteen  pair  of  ribs  and  only  four  lumbar  vertebrae ; 
and  Eustachius  once  found  eleven  dorsal  vertebrae  and 
six  lumbar  vertebrae. — CEuvres  de  Pierre  Camper,  T.  1, 
p.  42.  As  Tyson  states,  his  "  Pygmie  "  had  thirteen  pair 
of  ribs  and  five  lumbar  vertebrae.  The  question  of  the 
curves  of  the  spinal  column  in  the  Apes  requires  further 
investigation. 


n  GORILLA  AND  OTHER  APES.  103 

the  other  hand,  the  spinal  column  is  either 
straight,  or  even  concave  forwards,  throughout  the 
lumhar  region. 

Whether  we  take  these  characters  then,  or  such 
minor  ones  as  those  which  are  derivable  from  the 
proportional  length  of  the  spines  of  the  cervical 
vertebrae,  and  the  like,  there  is  no  doubt  whatso- 
ever as  to  the  marked  difference  between  Man  and 
the  Gorilla;  but  there  is  as  little,  that  equally 
marked  differences,  of  the  very  same  order,  obtain 
between  the  Gorilla  and  the  lower  Apes. 

The  Pelvis,  or  bony  girdle  of  the  hips,  of  Man 
is  a  strikingly  human  part  of  his  organisation;  the 
expanded  haunch  bones  affording  support  for  his 
viscera  during  his  habitually  erect  posture,  and 
giving  space  for  the  attachment  of  the  great  mus- 
cles which  enable  him  to  assume  and  to  preserve 
that  attitude.  In  these  respects  the  pelvis  of  the 
Gorilla  differs  very  considerably  from  his  (Fig.  16). 
But  go  no  lower  than  the  Gibbon,  and  see  how 
vastly  more  he  differs  from  the  Gorilla  than  the 
latter  does  from  Man,  even  in  this  structure.  Look 
at  the  flat,  narrow  haunch  bones — the  long  and 
narrow  passage — the  coarse,  outwardly  curved, 
ischiatic  prominences  on  which  the  Gibbon  habitu- 
ally rests,  and  which  are  coated  by  the  so-called 
"  callosities,"  dense  patches  of  skin,  wholly  absent 
in  the  Gorilla,  in  the  Chimpanzee,  and  in  the 
Orang,  as  in  Man! 

In  the  lower  Monkeys  and  in  the  Lemurs  the 


Gihonn. 


M.r^tV^^VT^M?"*  •''°'^  ^'^«  ^e^^-«  of  the  bony  pelvis  of 


n 


GORILLA  AND  MAN:  SKULL.  105 


difference  becomes  more  striking  still,  the  pelvis 
acquiring  an  altogether  quadrupedal  character. 

But  now  let  us  turn  to  a  nobler  and  more 
characteristic  organ — that  by  which  the  human 
frame  seems  to  be,  and  indeed  is,  so  strongly  dis- 
tinguished from  all  others, — I  mean  the  skull. 
The  differences  between  a  Gorilla's  skull  and  a 
Man's  are  truly  immense  (Fig.  17).  In  the  former, 
the  face,  formed  largely  by  the  massive  jaw-bones, 
predominates  over  the  brain-case,  or  cranium 
proper:  in  the  latter,  the  proportions  of  the  two 
are  reversed.  In  the  Man,  the  occipital  foramen, 
through  which  passes  the  great  nervous  cord  con- 
necting the  brain  with  the  nerves  of  the  body,  is 
placed  just  behind  the  centre  of  the  base  of  the 
skull,  which  thus  becomes  evenly  balanced  in  the 
erect  posture;  in  the  Gorilla,  it  lies  in  the  posterior 
third  of  that  base.  In  the  Man,  the  surface  of  the 
skull  is  comparatively  smooth,  and  the  supraciliary 
ridges  or  brow  prominences  usually  project  but 
little— while,  in  the  Gorilla,  vast  crests  are  de- 
veloped upon  the  skull,  and  the  brow  ridges  over- 
hang the  cavernous  orbits,  like  great  penthouses. 

Sections  of  the  skulls,  however,  show  that  some 
of  the  apparent  defects  of  the  Gorilla's  cranium 
arise,  in  fact,  not  so  much  from  deficiency  of  brain- 
case  as  from  excessive  development  of  the  parts  of 
the  face.  The  cranial  cavity  is  not  ill-shaped,  and 
the  forehead  is  not  truly  flattened  or  very  retreat- 
ing, its  really  well-formed  curve  being  simply  dis- 


106       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

guised  by  the  mass  of  bone  which  is  built  up 
against  it  (Fig.  17). 

But  the  roofs  of  the  orbits  rise  more  obliquely 
into  the  cranial  cavity,  thus  diminishing  the  space 
for  the  lower"  part  of  the  anterior  lobes  of  the 
brain,  and  the  absolute  capacity  of  the  cranium 
is  far  less  than  that  of  Man.  So  far  as  I  am  aware, 
no  human  cranium  belonging  to  an  adult  man 
has  yet  been  observed  with  a  less  cubical  capacity 
than  62  cubic  inches,  the  smallest  cranium  ob- 
served in  any  race  of  men  by  Morton,  measuring 
63  cubic  inches;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  most 
capacious  Gorilla  skull  yet  measured  has  a  content 
of  not  more  than  34^  cubic  inches.  Let  us  assume, 
for  simplicity's  sake,  that  the  lowest  Man's  skull 
has  twice  the  capacity  of  that  of  the  highest 
Gorilla.* 

*  It  has  been  affirmed  that  Hindoo  crania  sometimes 
contain  as  little  as  27  ounces  of  water,  which  would  give 
a  capacity  of  about  46  cubic  inches.  The  minimum  capac- 
ity which  I  have  assumed  above,  however,  is  based  upon 
the  valuable  tables  published  by  Professor  R.  Wagner  in 
his  Vorstudicn  zn  einer  tcissenschaftlichen  Morphologie 
und  Physiologic  des  menschlichen  Gehrius.  As  the  result 
of  the  careful  weighing  of  more  than  900  human  brains, 
Professor  Wagner  states  that  one-half  weighed  between 
1200  and  1400  grammes,  and  that  about  two-ninths,  con- 
sisting for  the  most  part  of  male  brains,  exceed  1400 
grammes.  The  lightest  brain  of  an  adult  male,  with 
sound  mental  faculties,  recorded  by  Wagner,  weighed 
1020  grammes.  As  a  gramme  equals  15.4  grains,  and  a 
cubic  inch  of  water  contains  252.4  grains,  this  is  equivalent 
to  62  cubic  inches  of  water;  so  that  as  brain  is  heavier 
than  water,  we  are  perfectly  safe  against  erring  on  the 
side  of  diminution  in  taking  this  as  the  smallest  capacity 
of  any  adult  male  human  brain.     The  only  adult  male 


n  CRANIAL  CAPACITIES.  107 

No  doubt,  this  is  a  very  striking  difference,  but 
it  loses  much  of  its  apparent  systematic  value, 
when  viewed  by  the  light  of  certain  other  equally 
indubitable  facts  respecting  cranial  capacities. 

The  first  of  these  is,  that  the  difference  in  the 
volume  of  the  cranial  cavity  of  different  races  of 
mankind  is  far  greater,  absolutely,  than  that  be- 
tween the  lowest  Man  and  the  highest  Ape,  while, 
relatively,  it  is  about  the  same.  For  the  largest 
human  skull  measured  by  Morton  contained  114 
cubic  inches,  that  is  to  say,  had  very  nearly  double 
the  capacity  of  the  smallest;  while  its  absolute  pre- 
ponderance, of  52  cubic  inches — is  far  greater 
than  that  by  which  the  lowest  adult  male  human 
cranium  surpasses  the  largest  of  the  Gorillas 
(62 — 34^  =  27^).  Secondly,  the  adult  crania  of 
Gorillas  which  have  as  yet  been  measured  differ 
among  themselves  by  nearly  one-third,  the  maxi- 
mum capacity  being  34.5  cubic  inches,  the  mini- 
mum 24  cubic  inches;  and^  thirdly,  after  making 

brain,  weighing  as  little  as  970  grammes,  is  that  of  an 
idiot;  but  the  brain  of  an  adult  woman,  against  the 
soundness  of  whose  faculties  nothing  appears,  weighed  as 
little  as  907  grammes  (5.5.3  cubic  inches  of  water)  ;  and 
Reid  gives  an  adult  female  brain  of  still  smaller  capacity. 
The  heaviest  brain  (1872  grammes,  or  about  115  cubic 
inches)  was,  however,  that  of  a  woman;  next  to  it  comes 
the  brain  of  Cuvier  (1861  grammes),  then  Byron  (1807 
grammes),  and  then  an  insane  person  (1783  grammes). 
The  lightest  adult  brain  recorded  (720  grammes)  was  that 
of  an  idiotic  female.  The  brains  of  five  children,  four 
years  old,  weighed  between  127.5  and  992  grammes.  So 
that  it  may  be  safely  said,  that  an  average  European  child 
of  four  years  old  has  a  brain  twice  as  lai^e  as  that  of  an 
adult  Gorilla. 


108       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

all  due  allowance  for  difference  of  size,  the  cranial 
capacities  of  some  of  the  lower  Apes  fall  nearly  as 
much,  relatively,  below  those  of  the  higher  Apes 
as  the  latter  fall  below  Man. 

Thus,  even  in  the  important  matter  of  cranial 
capacity.  Men  differ  more  widely  from  one  an- 
other than  they  do  from  the  Apes;  while  the  low- 
est Apes  differ  as  much,  in  proportion,  from  the 
highest,  as  the  latter  does  from  Man.  The  last 
proposition  is  still  better  illustrated  by  the  study 
of  the  modifications  which  other  parts  of  the 
cranium  undergo  in  the  Simian  series. 

It  is  the  large  proportional  size  of  the  facial 
bones  and  the  great  projection  of  the  jaws  which 
confer  upon  the  Gorilla's  skull  its  small  facial 
angle  and  brutal  character. 

But  if  we  consider  the  proportional  size  of  the 
facial  bones  to  the  skull  proj^er  only,  the  little 
Clirysoihrix  (Fig.  17)  differs  very  widely  from  the 
Gorilla,  and,  in  the  same  way,  as  Man  does;  while 
the  Baboons  {Cynocephalus,  Fig.  17)  exaggerate 
the  gross  proportions  of  the  muzzle  of  the  great 
Anthropoid,  so  that  its  visage  looks  mild  and  hu- 
man by  comparison  with  theirs.  The  difference 
between  the  Gorilla  and  the  Baboon  is  even  greater 
than  it  appears  at  first  sight;  for  the  great  facial 
mass  of  the  former  is  largely  due  to  a  downward 
development  of  the  jaws;  an  essentially  human 
character,  superadded  upon  that  almost  purely 
forward,  essentially  brutal,  development   of  the 


ATJSTHAXilAN. 


CHRTSOTHHIX. 


GORXLliA- 


CYNOCEPHALXJS 


MYCETEiS. 


liEMUR. 


fia  17— Sections  of  the  skulls  of  Man  and  varioua 
Apes,  drawn  so  as  to  give  the  cerebral  cavity  the  same 


110       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

length  in  each  case,  thereby  displaying  the  varying  pro- 
portions of  the  facial  bones.  The  line  b  indicates  the 
plane  of  the  tentorium,  which  separates  the  cerebrum 
from  the  cerebellum ;  d,  the  axis  of  the  occipital  outlet  of 
the  skull.  The  extent  of  cerebral  cavity  behind  c,  which 
is  a  perpendicular  erected  on  b  at  the  point  where  the  ten- 
torium is  attached  posteriorly,  indicates  the  degree  to 
which  the  cerebrum  overlaps  the  cerebellum — the  space 
occupied  by  which  is  roughly  indicated  by  the  dark  shad- 
ing. In  comparing  these  diagrams,  it  must  be  recollected, 
that  figures  on  so  small  a  scale  as  these  simply  exemplify 
the  statements  in  the  text,  the  proof  of  which  is  to  be 
found  in  the  objects  themselves. 

same  parts  which  characterises  the  Baboon,  and 
yet  more  remarkably  distinguishes  the  Lemur. 

Similarly,  the  occipital  foramen  of  Mycetes 
(Fig.  17),  and  still  more  of  the  Lemurs,  is  situated 
completely  in  the  posterior  face  of  the  skull,  or  as 
much  further  back  than  that  of  the  Gorilla,  as 
that  of  the  Gorilla  is  further  back  than  that  of 
Man;  while,  as  if  to  render  patent  the  futility  of 
the  attempt  to  base  any  broad  classificatory  distinc- 
tion on  such  a  character,  the  same  group  of  Platy- 
rhine,  or  American  monkeys,  to  which  the  Mycetes 
belongs,  contains  the  Chrysothrix,  whose  occipital 
foramen  is  situated  far  more  forward  than  in  any 
other  ape,  and  nearly  approaches  the  position  it 
holds  in  Man. 

Again,  the  Orang's  skull  is  as  devoid  of  exces- 
sively developed  supraciliary  prominences  as  a 
Man's,  though  some  varieties  exhibit  great  crests 
elsewhere  (See  p.  25);  and  in  some  of  the  Cebine 
apes  and  in  the  Chrysothrix,  the  cranium  is  as 
smooth  and  rounded  as  that  of  Man  himself. 


n  TEETH:  MEN  AND  APES.  HI 

What  is  true  of  these  leading  characteristics  of 
the  skull,  holds  good,  as  may  be  imagined,  of  all 
minor  features;  so  that  for  every  constant  differ- 
ence between  the  Gorilla's  skull  and  the  Man's  a 
similar  constant  difference  of  the  same  order  (that 
is  to  say,  consisting  in  excess  or  defect  of  the  same 
quality)  may  be  found  between  the  Gorilla's  skull 
and  that  of  some  other  ape.  So  that,  for  the  skull, 
no  less  than  for  the  skeleton  in  general,  the  propo- 
sition holds  good,  that  the  differences  between  Man 
and  the  Gorilla  are  of  smaller  value  than  those  be- 
tween the  Gorilla  and  some  other  Apes. 

In  connection  with  the  skull,  I  may  speak  of 
the  teeth — organs  which  have  a  peculiar  classifi- 
catory  value,  and  whose  resemblances  and  differ- 
ences of  number,  form,  and  succession,  taken  as  a 
whole,  are  usually  regarded  as  more  trustworthy 
indicators  of  affinity  than  any  others. 

Man  is  provided  with  two  sets  of  teeth — milk 
teeth  and  permanent  teeth.  The  former  consist 
of  four  incisors,  or  cutting  teeth;  two  canines,  or 
eye-teeth;  and  four  molars  or  grinders,  in  each  jaw, 
making  twenty  in  all.  The  latter  (Fig  18)  com- 
prise four  incisors,  two  canines,  four  small  grinders, 
called  premolars  or  false  molars,  and  six  large 
grinders,  or  true  molars  in  each  jaw — making 
thirty-two  in  all.  The  internal  incisors  are  larger 
than  the  external  pair,  in  the  uj)per  jaw,  smaller 
than  the  external  pair,  in  the  lower  jaw.     The 


112        MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

crowns  of  the  upper  molars  exhibit  four  cusps,  or 
blunt-pointed  elevations,  and  a  ridge  crosses  the 
crown  obliquely,  from  the  inner,  anterior  cusp  to 
the  outer,  posterior  cusp  (Fig.  18  m^).  The  an- 
terior lower  molars  have  five  cusps,  three  external 
and  two  internal.  The  premolars  have  two  cusps^ 
one  internal  and  one  external,  of  which  the  outer 
is  the  higher. 

In  all  these  respects  the  dentition  of  the  Go- 
rilla may  be  described  in  the  same  terms  as  that  of 
Man;  but  in  other  matters  it  exhibits  many  and 
important  differences  (Fig.  18). 

Thus  the  teeth  of  man  constitute  a  regular  and 
even  series — without  any  break  and  without  any 
marked  projection  of  one  tooth  above  the  level  of 
the  rest;  a  peculiarity  which,  as  Cuvier  long  ago 
showed,  is  shared  by  no  other  mammal  save  one — 
as  different  a  creature  from  man  as  can  well  be 
imagined — namely,  the  long  extinct  Anoplotheri- 
um.  The  teeth  of  the  Gorilla,  on  the  contrary, 
exhibit  a  break,  or  interval,  termed  the  diastema, 
in  both  jaws:  in  front  of  the  eye-tooth,  or  between 
it  and  the  outer  incisor,  in  the  upper  jaw;  behind 
the  eye-tooth,  or  between  it  and  the  front  false 
molar,  in  the  lower  jaw.  Into  this  break  in  the 
series,  in  each  jaw,  fits  the  canine  of  the  opposite 
jaw;  the  size  of  the  eye-tooth  in  the  Gorilla  being 
BO  great  that  it  projects,  like  a  tusk,  far  beyond 
the  general  level  of  the  other  teeth.  The  roots  of 
the  false  molar  teeth  of  the  Gorilla,  again,  are 


Man. 


/        '^'-       ni2     m^ 


Cynccephalus.        htn,        i 


m-» 


TTl^ 


X2 


Tib 


Cheircmifs. 


Fig.   18.— Lateral  views,  of  the  same  length,  of  the 
upper  jaws  of^  various  Primates,     i,  incisors;  c,  canines; 


114       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

pm,  premolars;  m,  molars.  A  line  is  drawn  through  the 
first  molar  of  Man,  Gorilla,  Cynocephalus,  and  Cebu9, 
and  the  grinding  surface  of  the  second  molar  is  shown  in 
each,  its  anterior  and  internal  angle  being  just  above  the 
tn  of  m^ 

more  complex  than  in  Man,  and  the  proportional 
size  of  the  molars  is  different.  The  Gorilla  has  the 
crown  of  the  hindmost  grinder  of  the  lower  jaw 
more  complex,  and  the  order  of  eruption  of  the 
permanent  teeth  is  different;  the  permanent  ca- 
nines making  their  appearance  before  the  second 
and  third  molars  in  Man,  and  after  them  in  the 
Gorilla. 

Thus,  while  the  teeth  of  the  Gorilla  closely 
resemble  those  of  Man  in  number,  kind,  and  in 
the  general  pattern  of  their  crowns,  they  exhibit 
marked  differences  from  those  of  Man  in  secondary 
respects,  such  as  relative  size,  number  of  fangs, 
and  order  of  appearance. 

But,  if  the  teeth  of  the  Gorilla  be  compared 
with  those  of  an  Ape,  no  further  removed  from  it 
than  a  Cynocephalus,  or  Baboon,  it  will  be  found 
that  differences  and  resemblances  of  the  same 
order  are  easily  observable;  but  that  many  of  the 
points  in  which  the  Gorilla  resembles  Man  are 
those  in  which  it  differs  from  the  Baboon;  while 
various  respects  in  which  it  differs  from  Man  are 
exaggerated  in  the  Cynocephalus.  The  number 
and  the  nature  of  the  teeth  remain  the  same  in 
the  Baboon  as  in  the  Gorilla  and  in  Man.  But 
the  pattern  of  the  Baboon's  upper  molars  is  quite 


n  MAN  AND  APES:  TEETH.  US 

different  from  that  described  above  (Fig.  18),  the 
canines  are  proportionally  longer  and  more  knife- 
like; the  anterior  premolar  in  the  lower  jaw  is 
specially  modified;  the  posterior  molar  of  the  lower 
jaw  is  still  larger  and  more  complex  than  in  the 
Gorilla. 

Passing  from  the  old-world  Apes  to  those  of 
the  new  world,  we  meet  with  a  change  of  much 
greater  importance  than  any  of  these.  In  such  a 
genus  as  Cehus,  for  example  (Fig.  18),  it  will  be 
found  that  while  in  some  secondary  points,  such 
as  the  projection  of  the  canines  and  the  diastema, 
the  resemblance  to  the  great  ape  is  preserved;  in 
other  and  most  important  respects,  the  dentition 
is  extremely  different.  Instead  of  20  teeth  in  the 
milk  set,  there  are  24:  instead  of  32  teeth  in  the 
permanent  set,  there  are  36,  the  false  molars  being 
increased  from  eight  to  twelve.  And  in  form,  the 
crowns  of  the  molars  are  very  unlike  those  of  the 
Gorilla,  and  differ  far  more  widely  from  the  human 
pattern. 

The  Marmosets,  on  the  other  hand,  exhibit  the 
same  number  of  teeth  as  Man  and  the  Gorilla;  but, 
notwithstanding  this,  their  dentition  is  very  dif- 
ferent, for  they  have  four  more  false  molars,  like 
the  other  American  monkeys — but  as  they  have 
four  fewer  true  molars,  the  total  remains  the  same. 
And  passing  from  the  American  apes  to  the 
Lemurs,  the  dentition  becomes  still  more  com- 
pletely and  essentially  different  from  that  of  the 


116       MAN  AND  THE   LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

Gorilla.  The  incisors  begin  to  vary  both  in  num- 
ber and  in  form.  The  molars  acquire,  more  and 
more,  a  many-pointed,  insectivorous  character,  and 
in  one  Genus,  the  Aye- Aye  (Cheiromys),  the  ca- 
nines disappear,  and  the  teeth  completely  simulate 
those  of  a  Eodent  (Fig.  18). 

Hence  it  is  obvious  that,  greatly  as  the  denti- 
tion of  the  highest  Ape  differs  from  that  of  Man, 
it  differs  far  more  widely  from  that  of  the  lower 
and  lowest  Apes. 

Whatever  part  of  the  animal  fabric — whatever 
series  of  muscles,  whatever  viscera  might  be  se- 
lected for  comparison — the  result  would  be  the 
same — the  lower  Apes  and  the  Gorilla  would  dif- 
fer more  than  the  Gorilla  and  the  Man.  I  can- 
not attempt  in  this  place  to  follow  out  all  these 
comparisons  in  detail,  and  indeed  it  is  unnecessary 
I  should  do  so.  But  certain  real,  or  supposed, 
structural  distinctions  between  man  and  the  apes 
remain,  upon  which  so  much  stress  has  been  laid, 
that  they  require  careful  consideration,  in  order 
that  the  true  value  may  be  assigned  to  those  which 
are  real,  and  the  emptiness  of  those  which  are 
fictitious  may  be  exposed.  I  refer  to  the  char- 
acters of  the  hand,  the  foot,  and  the  brain. 

Man  has  been  defined  as  the  only  animal  pos- 
sessed of  two  hands  terminating  his  fore  limbs, 
and  of  two  feet  ending  his  hind  limbs,  while  it  has 
been  said  that  all  the  apes  possess  four  hands;  and 


II         MAN  AND  APES:  HAND  AND  BRAIN.     117 

he  has  been  affirmed  to  differ  fundamentally  from 
all  the  apes  in  the  characters  of  his  brain,  which 
alone,  it  has  been  strangely  asserted  and  reas- 
serted, exhibits  the  structures  known  to  anatomists 
as  the  posterior  lobe,  the  posterior  cornu  of  the 
lateral  ventricle,  and  the  hippocampus  minor. 

That  the  former  proposition  should  have 
gained  general  acceptance  is  not  surprising — in- 
deed, at  first  sight,  appearances  are  much  in  its 
favour:  but,  as  for  the  second,  one  can  only  admire 
the  surpassing  courage  of  its  enunciator,  seeing 
that  it  is  an  innovation  which  is  not  only  opposed 
to  generally  and  justly  accepted  doctrines,  but 
which  is  directly  negatived  by  the  testimony  of  all 
original  inquirers,  who  have  specially  investigated 
the  matter:  and  that  it  neither  has  been,  nor  can 
be,  supported  by  a  single  anatomical  preparation. 
It  would,  in  fact,  be  unworthy  of  serious  refutation, 
except  for  the  general  and  natural  belief  that  de- 
liberate and  reiterated  assertions  must  have  some 
foundation. 

Before  we  can  discuss  the  first  point  with  ad- 
vantage we  must  consider  with  some  attention, 
and  compare  together,  the  structure  of  the  human 
hand  and  that  of  the  human  foot,  so  that  we  may 
have  distinct  and  clear  ideas  of  what  constitutes  a 
hand  and  what  a  foot. 

The  external  form  of  the  human  hand  is  famil- 
iar enough  to  every  one.     It  consists  of  a  stout 


118       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

wrist  followed  by  a  broad  palm,  formed  of  flesh, 
and  tendons,  and  skin,  binding  together  four  bones, 
and  dividing  into  four  long  and  flexible  digits,  or 
fingers,  each  of  which  bears  on  the  back  of  its  last 
joint  a  broad  and  flattened  nail.    The  longest  cleft 
between  any  two  digits  is  rather  less  than  half  as 
long  as  the  hand.     From  the  outer  side  of  the 
base  of  the  palm  a  stout  digit  goes  off,  having 
only  two  joints  instead  of  three;  so  short,  that  it 
only  reaches  to  a  little  beyond  the  middle  of  the 
first  joint  of  the  finger  next  it;  and  further  re- 
markable by  its  great  mobility,  in  consequence  of 
which  it  can  be  directed  outwards,  almost  at  a 
right  angle  to  the  rest.     This  digit  is  called  the 
"  pollex,''  or  thumb;  and,  like  the  others,  it  bears 
a  flat  nail  upon  the  back  of  its  terminal  joint.    In 
consequence  of  the  proportions  and  mobility  of  the 
thumb,  it  is  what  is  termed  "  opposable  ";  in  other 
words,  its  extremity  can,  with  the  greatest  ease, 
be  brought  into  contact  with  the  extremities  of 
any  of  the  fingers;  a  property  upon  which  the  pos- 
sibility of  our  carrying  into  effect  the  conceptions 
of  the  mind  so  largely  depends. 

The  external  form  of  the  foot  differs  widely 
from  that  of  the  hand;  and  yet,  when  closely  com- 
pared, the  two  present  some  singular  resemblances. 
Thus  the  ankle  corresponds  in  a  manner  with  the 
wrist;  the  sole  with  the  palm;  the  toes  with  the 
fingers;  the  great  toe  with  the  thumb.  But  the 
toes,  or  digits  of  the  foot,  are  far  shorter  in  pro- 


n    MAN  AND  APES:  HAND  AND  FOOT.   119 

portion  than  the  digits  of  the  hand,  and  are  less 
moveable,  the  want  of  mobility  being  most  strik- 
ing in  the  great  toe — which,  again,  is  very  much 
larger  in  proportion  to  the  other  toes  than  the 
thumb  to  the  fingers.  In  considering  this  point, 
however,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  civilized 
great  toe,  confined  and  cramped  from  childhood 
upwards,  is  seen  to  a  great  disadvantage,  and  that 
in  uncivilized  and  barefooted  people  it  retains  a 
great  amount  of  mobility,  and  even  some  sort  of 
opposability.  The  Chinese  boatmen  are  said  to  be 
able  to  pull  an  oar;  the  artisans  of  Bengal  to  weave, 
and  the  Carajas  to  steal  fishhooks  by  its  help; 
though,  after  all,  it  must  be  recollected  that  the 
structure  of  its  joints  and  the  arrangement  of  its 
bones,  necessarily  render  its  prehensile  action  far 
less  perfect  than  that  of  the  thumb. 

But  to  gain  a  precise  conception  of  the  re- 
semblances and  differences  of  the  hand  and  foot, 
and  of  the  distinctive  characters  of  each,  we  must 
look  below  the  skin,  and  compare  the  bony  frame- 
work and  its  motor  apparatus  in  each  (Fig.  19). 

The  skeleton  of  the  hand  exhibits,  in  the  region 
which  we  term  the  wrist,  and  which  is  technically 
called  the  carpus — two  rows  of  closely  fitted  polyg- 
onal bones,  four  in  each  row,  which  are  tolerably 
equal  in  size.  The  bones  of  the  first  row  with  the 
bones  of  the  forearm,  form  the  wrist  joint,  and  are 
arranged  side  by  side,  no  one  greatly  exceeding  or 
overlapping  the  rest. 


ILancl. 


Foot. 


Fig.  19. — The  skeleton  of  the  Hand  and  Foot  of  Man 
reduced  from  Dr.  Carter's  drawings  in  Gray's  Anatomy. 
The  hand  is  drawn  to  a  larger  scale  than  the  foot.  I'he 
line  a  n  in  the  hand  indicates  the  boundary  between  the 
carpus  and  the  metacarpus;  hh  that  between  the  latter 
and  the  proximal  phalanges;  cc  marks  the  ends  of  the 
distal  phalanges.  The  line  a'  a'  in  the  foot  indicates  the 
boundaiy  between  the  tarsus  and  metatarsus;  ft'  ft'  marks 
that  betw"^n  the  metatarsus  and  the  proximal  phalanges; 
and  c'  c'  bounds  the  ends  of  the  distal  phalanges;  ca,  the 
calcaneum;  as,  the  astragalus;  sc,  the  scaphoid  bone  in 
the  tarsus. 


n  MAN  AND  APES:  HAND  AND  FOOT.      121 

Three  of  the  bones  of  the  second  row  of  the 
carpus  bear  the  four  long  bones  which  support  the 
palm  of  the  hand.  The  fifth  bone  of  the  same 
character  is  articulated  in  a  much  more  free  and 
moveable  manner  than  the  others,  with  its  carpal 
bone,  and  forms  the  base  of  the  thumb.  These 
are  called  metacarpal  bones,  and  they  carry  the 
phalanges  or  bones  of  the  digits,  of  which  there 
are  two  in  the  thumb,  and  three  in  each  of  the 
fingers. 

The  skeleton  of  the  foot  is  very  like  that  of  the 
hand  in  some  respects.  Thus  there  are  three 
phalanges  in  each  of  the  lesser  toes,  and  only  two 
in  the  great  toe,  which  answers  to  the  thumb. 
There  is  a  long  bone,  termed  metatarsal,  answering 
to  the  metacarpal,  for  each  digit;  and  the  tarsus 
which  corresponds  with  the  carpus,  presents  four 
short  polygonal  bones  in  a  row,  which  correspond 
very  closely  with  the  four  carpal  bones  of  the  sec- 
ond row  of  the  hand.  In  other  respects  the  foot 
differs  very  widely  from  the  hand.  Thus  the  great 
toe  is  the  longest  digit  but  one;  and  its  metatarsal 
is  far  less  moveably  articulated  with  the  tarsus 
than  the  metacarpal  of  the  thumb  with  the  car- 
pus. But  a  far  more  important  distinction  lies  in 
the  fact  that,  instead  of  four  more  tarsal  bones 
there  are  only  three;  and,  that  these  three  are  not 
arranged  side  by  side,  or  in  one  row.  One  of  them, 
the  OS  calcis  or  heel  bone  (ca),  lies  externally,  and 
sends  back  the  large  projecting  heel;  another,  the 


122       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  ll 

astragalus  (as),  rests  on  this  by  one  face,  and  by 
another,  forms,  with  the  bones  of  the  leg,  the 
ankle  joint;  while  a  third  face,  directed  forwards, 
is  separated  from  the  three  inner  tarsal  bones  of 
the  row  next  the  metatarsus  by  a  bone  called  the 
scaphoid  (sc). 

Thus  there  is  a  fundamental  difference  in  the 
structure  of  the  foot  and  the  hand,  observable 
when  the  carpus  and  the  tarsus  are  contrasted: 
and  there  are  differences  of  degree  noticeable  when 
the  proportions  and  the  mobility  of  the  metacar- 
pals and  metatarsals,  with  their  respective  digits, 
are  compared  together. 

The  same  two  classes  of  differences  become 
obvious  when  the  muscles  of  the  hand  are  com- 
pared with  those  of  the  foot. 

Three  principal  sets  of  muscles,  called  "flex- 
ors," bend  the  fingers  and  thumb,  as  in  clench- 
ing the  fist,  and  three  sets, — the  extensors — ex- 
tend them,  as  in  straightening  the  fingers.  These 
muscles  are  all  "long  muscles";  that  it  to  say, 
the  fleshy  part  of  each,  lying  in  and  being  fixed  to 
the  bones  of  the  arm,  is,  at  the  other  end,  con- 
tinued into  tendons,  or  rounded  cords,  which  pass 
into  the  hand,  and  are  ultimately  fixed  to  the 
bones  which  are  to  be  moved.  Thus,  when  the  fin- 
gers are  bent,  the  fleshy  parts  of  the  flexors  of  the 
fingers,  placed  in  the  arm,  contract,  in  virtue  of 
their  peculiar  endowment  as  muscles;  and  pulling 
the  tendinous  cords,  connecting  with  their  ends. 


■    MAN  AND  APES:  HAND  AND  FOOT.   123 

cause  them  to  pull  down  the  bones  of  the  fingers 
towards  the  palm. 

Not  only  are  the  principal  flexors  of  the  fingers 
and  of  the  thumb  long  muscles,  but  they  remain 
quite  distinct  from  one  another  throughout  their 
whole  length. 

In  the  foot,  there  are  also  three  principal  flexor 
muscles  of  the  digits  or  toes,  and  three  principal 
extensors;  but  one  extensor  and  one  flexor  are 
short  muscles;  that  is  to  say,  their  fleshy  parts  are 
not  situated  in  the  leg  (which  corresponds  with 
the  arm),  but  in  the  back  and  in  the  sole  of  the  foot 
— regions  which  correspond  with  the  back  and  the 
palm  of  the  hand. 

Again,  the  tendons  of  the  long  flexor  of  the 
toes,  and  of  the  long  flexor  of  the  great  toe,  when 
they  reach  the  sole  of  the  foot,  do  not  remain  dis- 
tinct from  one  another,  as  the  flexors  in  the  palm 
of  the  hand  do,  but  they  become  united  and  com- 
mingled in  a  very  curious  manner — while  their 
united  tendons  receive  an  accessory  muscle  con- 
nected with  the  heel-bone. 

But  perhaps  the  most  absolutely  distinctive 
character  about  the  muscles  of  the  foot  is  the 
existence  of  what  is  termed  the  peronceus  longus, 
a  long  muscle  fixed  to  the  outer  bone  of  the 
leg,  and  sending  its  tendon  to  the  outer  ankle,  be- 
hind and  below  which  it  passes,  and  then  crosses 
the  foot  obliquely  to  be  attached  to  the  base  of 
the  great  toe.     No  muscle  in  the  hand  exactly 


124       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

corresponds  with  this,  which  is  eminently  a  foot 
muscle. 

To  resume — the  foot  of  man  is  distinguished 
from  his  hand  by  the  following  absolute  anatomi- 
cal differences: — 

1.  By  the  arrangement  of  the  tarsal  bones. 

2.  By  having  a  short  flexor  and  a  short  ex- 

tensor muscle  of  the  digits. 

3.  By  possessing  the  muscle  termed  peronceus 

longus. 
And  if  we  desire  to  ascertain  whether  the  ter- 
minal division  of  a  limb,  in  other  Primates,  is  to 
be  called  a  foot  or  a  hand,  it  is  by  the  presence  or 
absence  of  these  characters  that  we  must  be 
guided,  and  not  by  the  mere  proportions  and 
greater  or  lesser  mobility  of  the  great  toe,  which 
may  vary  indefinitely  without  any  fundamental 
alteration  in  the  structure  of  the  foot. 

Keeping  these  considerations  in  mind,  let  us 
now  turn  to  the  limbs  of  the  Gorilla.  The  ter- 
minal division  of  the  fore  limb  presents  no  diffi- 
culty— bone  for  bone  and  muscle  for  muscle,  are 
found  to  be  arranged  essentially  as  in  man,  or  with 
such  minor  differences  as  are  found  as  varieties  in 
man.  The  Gorilla's  hand  is  clumsier,  heavier,  and 
has  a  thumb  somewhat  shorter  in  proportion  than 
that  of  man;  but  no  one  has  ever  doubted  it  being 
a  true  hand. 

At  first  sight,  the  termination  of  the  hind  limb 


u  THE  PREHENSILE  FOOT.  125 

of  the  Gorilla  looks  very  hand-like,  and  as  it  is  still 
more  so  in  many  of  the  lower  apes,  it  is  not  won- 
derful that  the  appellation  "  Quadrumana,"  or 
four-handed  creatures,  adopted  from  the  older 
anatomists  *  by  Blumenbach,  and  unfortunately 
rendered  current  by  Cuvier,  should  have  gained 
such  wide  acceptance  as  a  name  for  the  Simian 
group.  But  the  most  cursory  anatomical  investi- 
gation at  once  proves  that  the  resemblance  of  the 
so-called  "hind  hand"  to  a  true  hand,  is  only 
skin  deep,  and  that,  in  all  essential  respects,  the 
hind  limb  of  the  Gorilla  is  as  truly  terminated 
by  a  foot  as  that  of  man.  The  tarsal  bones,  in  all 
important  circumstances  of  number,  disposition, 
and  form,  resemble  those  of  man  (Fig.  20).  The 
metatarsals  and  digits,  on  the  other  hand,  are  pro- 
portionally longer  and  more  slender,  while  the 
great  toe    is  not  only  proportionally  shorter  and 

•  In  speaking  of  the  foot  of  his  "  Pygmie,"  Tyson  re- 
marks, p.  13:  — 

"But  this  part  in  the  formation  and  in  its  function 
too,  being  liker  a  Hand  than  a  Foot:  for  the  distinguish- 
ing this  sort  of  animals  from  others,  I  have  thought 
whether  it  might  not  be  reckoned  and  called  rather  Quad- 
ru-manus  than  Quadrupes,  i.  e.  a  four-handed  rather  than 
a  four-footed  animal." 

As  this  passage  was  published  in  1699,  M.  I.  G.  St. 
Hilaire  is  clearly  in  error  in  ascribing  the  invention  of  the 
term  "  quadrumanous  "  to  Buffon,  though  "  bimanous  " 
may  belong  to  him.  Tyson  uses  "  Quadrumanus "  in 
several  places,  as  at  p.  91.  .  .  .  "Our  Pyijmie  is  no  Man, 
nor  yet  the  common  Ape,  but  a  sort  of  Animal  between 
both;  and  though  a  Biped,  yet  of  the  Quadrmnanus-kind: 
though  some  Mc7i  too  have  been  observed  to  use  their 
Feet  like  Hands  as  I  have  seen  several." 


126       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

weaker,  but  its  metatarsal  bone  is  united  by  a 
more  moveable  joint  with  the  tarsus.  At  the  same 
time,  the  foot  is  set  inore  obliquely  upon  the  leg 
than  in  man. 

As  to  the  muscles,  there  is  a  short  flexor,  a 
short  extensor,  and  a  peronoeus  longus,  while  the 
tendons  of  the  long  flexors  of  the  great  toe  and  of 
the  other  toes  are  united  together  and  with  an  ac- 
cessory fleshy  bundle. 

The  hind  limb  of  the  Gorilla,  therefore,  ends 
in  a  true  foot,  with  a  very  moveable  great  toe.  It 
is  a  prehensile  foot,  indeed,  but  is  in  no  sense  a 
hand;  it  is  a  foot  which  differs  from  that  of  man 
not  in  any  fundamental  character,  but  in  mere 
proportions,  in  the  degree  of  mobility,  and  in  the 
secondary  arrangement  of  its  parts. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  because  I 
speak  of  these  differences  as  not  fundamental,  that 
I  wish  to  underrate  their  value.  They  are  im- 
portant enough  in  their  way,  the  structure  of  the 
foot  being  in  strict  correlation  with  that  of  the 
rest  of  the  organism  in  each  case.  Nor  can  it  be 
doubted  that  the  greater  division  of  physiological 
labour  in  Man,  so  that,  the  function  of  support  is 
thrown  wholly  on  the  leg  and  foot,  is  an  advance 
in  organization  of  very  great  moment  to  him;  but, 
after  all,  regarded  anatomically,  the  resemblances 
between  the  foot  of  Man  and  the  foot  of  the  Gorilla 
are  far  more  striking  and  important  than  the  dif- 
ferences. 


n         APES:  HAND  AND  FOOT.       127 

I  have  dwelt  upon  this  point  at  length,  because 
it  is  one  regarding  which  much  delusion  prevails; 
but  I  might  have  passed  it  over  without  detriment 
to  my  argument,  which  only  requires  me  to  show 
that,  be  the  differences  between  the  hand  and  foot 
of  Man  and  those  of  the  Gorilla  what  they  may — 
the  differences  between  those  of  the  Gorilla,  and 
those  of  the  lower  Apes  are  much  greater. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  descend  lower  in  the  scale 
than  the  Orang  for  conclusive  evidence  on  this 
head. 

The  thumb  of  the  Orang  differs  more  from 
that  of  the  Gorilla  than  the  thumb  of  the  Gorilla 
differs  from  that  of  Man,  not  only  by  its  shortness, 
but  by  the  absence  of  any  special  long  flexor  mus- 
cle. The  carpus  of  the  Orang,  like  that  of  most 
lower  apes,  contains  nine  bones,  while  in  the  Go- 
rilla, as  in  Man  and  the  Chimpanzee,  there  are  only 
eight. 

The  Orang's  foot  (Fig.  20)  is  still  more  aber- 
rant; its  very  long  toes  and  short  tarsus,  short 
great  toe,  short  and  raised  heel,  great  obliquity  of 
articulation  with  the  leg,  and  absence  of  a  long 
flexor  tendon  to  the  great  toe,  separating  it  far 
more  widely  from  the  foot  of  the  Gorilla  than  the 
latter  is  separated  from  that  of  Man. 

But,  in  some  of  the  lower  apes,  the  hand  and 
foot  diverge  still  more  from  those  of  the  Gorilla, 
than  they  do  in  the  Orang.  The  thumb  ceases  to 
be  opposable  in  the  American  monkeys;  is  reduced 


128       MAN  ANT)  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS. 


u 


to  a  mere  rudiment  covered  by  the  skin  in  the 
Spider  Monkey;  and  is  directed  forwards  and  armed 
with  a  curved  claw  like  the  other  digits,  in  the 
Marmosets — so  that,  in  all  these  eases,  there  can 


ea. 


Fig.  20. — Foot  of  Man.  Oorilln.  nnd  Orang-Utan  of  the 
same  absolute  length,  to  show  t'e  ('ifFerences  in  propor- 
tion of  each.  T.etters  as  in  Finf.  1^.  Reduced  from  original 
dra^\ing3  by  Mr.  Waterhoiise  Hawkins. 

be  no  doubt  but  that  the  hand  is  more  different 
from  that  of  the  Gorilla  than  the  Gorilla's  hand 
is  from  Man's. 


n  APES:  HAND  AND  FOOT.  12^ 

And  as  to  the  foot,  the  great  toe  of  the  Mar- 
moset is  still  more  insignificant  in  proportion  than 
that  of  the  Orang — while  in  the  Lemurs  it  is  very 
large,  and  as  completely  thumb-like  and  opposable 
as  in  the  Gorilla — but  in  these  animals  the  second 
toe  is  often  irregularly  modified,  and  in  some  spe- 
cies the  two  principal  bones  of  the  tarsus,  the 
astragalus  and  the  os  calcis,  are  so  immensely 
elongated  as  to  render  the  foot,  so  far,  totally  un- 
like that  of  any  other  mammal. 

So  with  regard  to  the  muscles.  The  short 
flexor  of  the  toes  of  the  Gorilla  differs  from  that 
of  Man  by  the  circumstance  that  one  slip  of  the 
muscle  is  attached,  not  to  the  heel  bone,  but  to 
the  tendons  of  the  long  flexors.  The  lower  Apes 
depart  from  the  Gorilla  by  an  exaggeration  of  the 
same  character,  two,  three,  or  more,  slips  becoming 
fixed  to  the  long  flexor  tendons — or  by  a  multipli- 
cation of  the  slips. — Again,  the  Gorilla  differs 
slightly  from  Man  in  the  mode  of  interlacing  of 
the  long  flexor  tendons:  and  the  lower  apes  differ 
from  the  Gorilla  in  exhibiting  yet  other,  some- 
times very  complex,  arrangements  of  the  same 
parts,  and  occasionally  in  the  absence  of  the  acces- 
sory fleshy  bundle. 

Throughout  all  these  modifications  it  must  be 
recollected  that  the  foot  loses  no  one  of  its  essen- 
tial characters.  Every  Monkey  and  Lemur  ex- 
hibits the  characteristic  arrangement  of  tarsal 
bones,  possesses  a  short  flexor  and  short  extensor 
173 


130       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

muscle,  and  a  peroncBus  longus.  Varied  as  the  pro- 
portions and  appearance  of  the  organ  may  be,  the 
terminal  division  of  the  hind  limb  remains,  in  plan 
and  principle  of  construction,  a  foot,  and  never, 
in  those  respects,  can  be  confounded  with  a  hand. 

Hardly  any  part  of  the  bodily  frame,  then, 
could  be  found  better  calculated  to  illustrate  the 
truth  that  the  structural  differences  between  Man 
and  the  highest  Ape  are  of  less  value  than  those 
between  the  highest  and  the  lower  Apes,  than 
the  hand  or  the  foot;  and  yet,  perhaps,  there  is 
one  organ  the  study  of  which  enforces  the  same 
conclusion  in  a  still  more  striking  manner — and 
that  is  the  Brain. 

But  before  entering  upon  the  precise  question 
of  the  amount  of  difference  between  the  Ape's 
brain  and  that  of  Man,  it  is  necessary  that  we 
should  clearly  understand  what  constitutes  a  great, 
and  what  a  small  difference  in  cerebral  structure; 
and  we  shall  be  best  enabled  to  do  this  by  a  brief 
study  of  the  chief  modifications  which  the  brain 
exhibits  in  the  series  of  vertebrate  animals. 

The  brain  of  a  fish  is  very  small,  compared  with 
the  spinal  cord  into  which  it  is  continued,  and 
with  the  nerves  which  come  off  from  it:  of  the 
segments  of  which  it  is  composed — the  olfactory 
lobes,  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  and  the  succeed- 
ing divisions — no  one  predominates  so  much  over 
the  rest  as  to  obscure  or  cover  them;  and  the  so- 
called    optic   lobes   are,   frequently,    the    largest 


n  VERTEBRATA:  BRAINS.  131 

masses  of  all.  In  Eeptiles,  the  mass  of  the  brain, 
relatively  to  the  spinal  cord,  increases  and  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  begin  to  predominate  over 
the  other  parts;  while  in  Birds  this  predominance 
is  still  more  marked.  The  brain  of  the  lowest  Mam- 
mals, such  as  the  duck-billed  Platypus  and  the 
Opossums  and  Kangaroos,  exhibits  a  still  more 
definite  advance  in  the  same  direction.  The  cere- 
bral hemispheres  have  now  so  much  increased  in 
size  as,  more  or  less,  to  hide  the  representatives 
of  the  optic  lobes,  which  remain  comparatively 
small,  so  that  the  brain  of  a  Marsupial  is  extremely 
different  from  that  of  a  Bird,  Eeptile,  or  Fish.  A 
step  higher  in  the  scale,  among  the  placental  Mam- 
mals, the  structure  of  the  brain  acquires  a  vast 
modification — not  that  it  appears  much  altered 
externally,  in  a  Rat  or  in  a  Rabbit,  from  what  it 
is  in  a  Marsupial — nor  that  the  proportions  of  its 
parts  are  much  changed,  but  an  apparently  new 
structure  is  found  between  the  cerebral  hemi- 
spheres, connecting  them  together,  at  what  is 
called  the  "  great  commissure  "  or  "  corpus  cal- 
losum."  The  subject  requires  careful  re-investi- 
gation, but  if  the  currently  received  statements 
are  correct,  the  appearance  of  the  "  corpus  cal- 
losum  "  in  the  placental  mammals  is  the  greatest 
and  most  sudden  modification  exhibited  by  the 
brain  in  the  whole  series  of  vertebrated  animals — 
it  is  the  greatest  leap  anywhere  made  by  Nature  in 
her  brain  work.    For  the  two  halves  of  the  brain 


132       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

being  once  thus  knit  together,  the  progress  of 
cerebral  complexity  is  traceable  through  a  com- 
plete series  of  steps  from  the  lowest  Rodent,  or 
Insectivore,  to  Man;  and  that  complexity  consists, 
chiefly,  in  the  disproportionate  development  of  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  and  of  the  cerebellum,  but 
especially  of  the  former,  in  respect  to  the  other 
parts  of  the  brain. 

In  the  lower  placental  mammals,  the  cerebral 
hemispheres  leave  the  proper  upper  and  posterior 
face  of  the  cerebellum  completely  visible,  when 
the  brain  is  viewed  from  above;  but,  in  the  higher 
forms,  the  hinder  part  of  each  hemisphere,  sepa- 
rated only  by  the  tentorium  (p.  136)  from  the  an- 
terior face  of  the  cerebellum,  inclines  backwards 
and  downwards,  and  grows  out,  as  the  so-called 
"  posterior  lobe,"  so  as  at  length  to  overlap  and 
hide  the  cerebellum.  In  all  Mammals,  each 
cerebral  hemisphere  contains  a  cavity  which  is 
termed  the  "  ventricle  ";  and  as  this  ventricle  is 
prolonged,  on  the  one  hand,  forwards,  and  on  the 
other  downwards,  into  the  substance  of  the  hemi- 
sphere, it  is  said  to  have  two  horns  or  "  cornua," 
an  "  anterior  cornu,"  and  a  "  descending  cornu." 
When  the  posterior  lobe  is  well  developed,  a  third 
prolongation  of  the  ventricular  cavity  extends  into 
it,  and  is  called  the  "  posterior  cornu." 

In  the  lower  and  smaller  forms  of  placental 
Mammals  the  surface  of  the  cerebral  hemispheres 
is  either  smooth  or  evenly  rounded,  or  exhibits  a 


n  MAMMALIA:  BRAINS.  133 

very  few  grooves,  which  are  technically  termed 
"  sulci,"  separating  ridges  or  "  convolutions  "  of 
the  substance  of  the  brain;  and  the  smaller  species 
of  all  orders  tend  to  a  similar  smoothness  of  brain. 
But,  in  the  higher  orders,  and  especially  the  larger 
members  of  these  orders,  the  grooves,  or  sulci, 
become  extremely  numerous,  and  the  intermediate 
convolutions  proportionately  more  complicated  in 
their  meanderings,  until,  in  the  Elephant,  the 
Porpoise,  the  higher  Apes,  and  Man,  the  cerebral 
surface  appears  a  perfect  labyrinth  of  tortuous 
foldings. 

Where  a  posterior  lobe  exists  and  presents  its 
customary  cavity — the  posterior  cornu — it  com- 
monly happens  that  a  particular  sulcus  appears 
upon  the  inner  and  under  surface  of  the  lobe, 
parallel  with  and  beneath  the  floor  of  the  cornu — 
which  is,  as  it  were,  arched  over  the  roof  of  the 
sulcus.  It  is  as  if  the  groove  had  been  formed  by 
indenting  the  floor  of  the  posterior  horn  from  with- 
out with  a  blunt  instrument,  so  that  the  floor 
should  rise  as  a  convex  eminence.  Now  this 
eminence  is  what  has  been  termed  the  "  Hippo- 
campus minor;  "  the  "  Hippocampus  major  "  being 
a  larger  eminence  in  the  floor  of  the  descending 
cornu.  What  may  be  the  functional  importance 
of  either  of  these  structures  we  know  not. 

As  if  to  demonstrate,  by  a  striking  example,  the 
impossibility  of  erecting  any  cerebral  barrier  be- 


134       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  u 

tween  man  and  the  apes,  Nature  has  provided  us, 
in  the  latter  animals,  with  an  almost  complete 
series  of  gradations  from  hrains  little  higher  than 
that  of  a  Kodent,  to  brains  little  lower  than  that 
of  Man.    And  it  is  a  remarkable  circumstance,  that 
though  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  extends, 
there  is  one  true  structural  break  in  the  series  of 
forms  of  Simian  brains,  this  hiatus  does  not  lie 
between  Man  and  the  man-like  apes,  but  between 
the  lower  and  the  lowest  Simians;  or,  in  other 
words,  between  the  old  and  new  world  apes  and 
monkeys,  and  the  Lemurs.     Every  Lemur  which 
has  yet  been  examined,  in  fact,  has  its  cerebellum 
partially  visible  from  above,  and  its  posterior  lobe, 
with  the   contained  posterior  cornu  and  hippo- 
campus minor,  more  or  less  rudimentary.     Every 
Marmoset,  American  monkey,  old  world  monkey, 
Baboon,  or  Man-like  ape,  on  the  contrary,  has  its 
cerebellum   entirely  hidden,   posteriorly,   by   the 
cerebral    lobes,    and   possesses   a   large    posterior 
cornu,  with  a  well-developed  hippocampus  minor. 

In  many  of  these  creatures,  such  as  the  Saimiri 
(Chrysothrix),  the  cerebral  lobes  overlap  and  ex- 
tend much  further  behind  the  cerebellum,  in  pro- 
portion, than  they  do  in  man  (Fig.  17) — and  it 
is  quite  certain  that,  in  all,  the  cerebellum  is  com- 
pletely covered  behind,  by  well  developed  posterior 
lobes.  The  fact  can  be  verified  by  every  one  who 
possesses  the  skull  of  any  old  or  new  world  mon- 
key.   For,  inasmuch  as  the  brain  in  all  mammals 


n  THE  POSTERIOR  LOBES.  135 

completely  fills  the  cranial  cavity,  it  is  obvious 
that  a  cast  of  the  interior  of  the  skull  will  repro- 
duce the  general  form  of  the  brain,  at  any  rate 
with  such  minute  and,  for  the  present  purpose, 
utterly  unimportant  differences  as  may  result  from 
the  absence  of  the  enveloping  membranes  of  the 
brain  in  the  dry  skull.  But  if  such  a  cast  be  made 
in  plaster,  and  compared  with  a  similar  cast  of  the 
interior  of  a  human  skull,  it  will  be  obvious  that 
the  cast  of  the  cerebral  chamber,  representing  the 
cerebrum  of  the  ape,  as  completely  covers  over  and 
overlaps  the  cast  of  the  cerebellar  chamber,  repre- 
senting the  cerebellum,  as  it  does  in  the  man  (Fig. 
21).  A  careless  observer,  forgetting  that  a  soft 
structure  like  the  brain  loses  its  proper  shape  the 
moment  it  is  taken  out  of  the  skull,  may  indeed 
mistake  the  uncovered  condition  of  the  cerebel- 
lum of  an  extracted  and  distorted  brain  for  the 
natural  relations  of  the  parts;  but  his  error  must 
become  patent  even  to  himself  if  he  try  to  replace 
the  brain  within  the  cranial  chamber.  To  suppose 
that  the  cerebellum  of  an  ape  is  naturally  uncov- 
ered behind  is  a  miscomprehension  comparable 
only  to  that  of  one  who  should  imagine  that  a 
man's  lungs  always  occupy  but  a  small  portion  of 
the  thoracic  cavity,  because  they  do  so  when  the 
chest  is  opened,  and  their  elasticity  is  no  longer 
neutralized  by  the  pressure  of  the  air. 

And  the  error  is  the  less  excusable,  as  it  must 
become  apparent  to  every  one  who  examines  a  sec- 


B 


OTiimp  tx.-nzee. 


'^> 


Fig.  21. — Drawings  of  the  internal  casts  of  a  Man's  and 
of  a  Chimpanzee's  skull,  of  the  same  absolute  length,  and 
placed  in  corresponding  positions.  A.  Cerebrum;  B.  Cere- 
bellum. The  former  drawing  is  taken  from  a  cast  in  the 
Musetim  of  the  Roval  College  of  Surgeons,  the  latter  from 
the  photograph  of  the  cast  of  a  Chimpanzee's  skull,  which 
illustrates  the  paper  by  Mr.  Marshall  "  On  the  Brain  of 


u  THE  POSTERIOR  LOBES.  137 

the  Chimpanzee "  in  the  Natural  History  Review  for 
July,  1861.  The  sharper  definition  of  the  lower  edge  of 
the  cast  of  the  cerebral  chamber  in  the  Chimpanzee  arises 
from  the  circumstance  that  the  tentorium  remained  in 
that  skull  and  not  in  the  Man's.  The  cast  more  accurately 
represents  the  brain  in  the  Chimpanzee  than  in  the  Man; 
and  the  great  backward  projection  of  the  posterior  lobes 
of  the  cerebrum  of  the  former,  beyond  the  cerebellum,  is 
conspicuous. 


tion  of  the  skull  of  any  ape  above  a  Lemur,  without 
taking  the  trouble  to  make  a  cast  of  it.  For  there 
is  a  very  marked  groove  in  every  such  skull,  as  iij 
the  human  skull — which  indicates  the  line  of  at- 
tachment of  what  is  termed  the  tentorium — a  sort 
of  parchment-like  shelf,  or  partition,  which,  in  the 
recent  state,  is  interposed  between  the  cerebrum 
and  cerebellum,  and  prevents  the  former  from 
pressing  upon  the  latter.    (See  Fig.  17.) 

This  groove,  therefore,  indicates  the  line  of 
separation  between  that  part  of  the  cranial  cavity 
which  contains  the  cerebrum,  and  that  which 
contains  the  cerebellum;  and  as  the  brain  exactly 
fills  the  cavity  of  the  skull,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
relations  of  these  two  parts  of  the  cranial  cavity 
at  once  informs  us  of  the  relations  of  their  con- 
tents. Now  in  man,  in  all  the  old  world,  and  in 
all  the  new  world  Simiae,  with  one  exception,  when 
the  face  is  directed  forwards,  this  line  of  attach- 
ment of  the  tentorium,  or  impression  for  the  lateral 
sinus,  as  it  is  technically  called,  is  nearly  hori- 
zontal, and  the  cerebral  chamber  invariably  over- 
laps or  projects  behind  the  cerebellar  chamber. 


138       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

In  the  Howler  Monkey  or  Mycetes  (see  Fig.  17), 
the  line  passes  obliquely  upwards  and  backwards, 
and  the  cerebral  overlap  is  almost  nil;  while  in 
the  Lemurs,  as  in  the  lower  mammals,  the  line  is 
much  more  inclined  in  the  same  direction,  and  the 
cerebellar  chamber  projects  considerably  beyond 
the  cerebral. 

When  the  gravest  errors  respecting  points  so 
easily  settled  as  this  question  respecting  the  pos- 
terior lobes,  can  be  authoritatively  propounded,  it 
is  no  wonder  that  matters  of  observation,  of  no 
very  complex  character,  but  still  requiring  a  certain 
amount  of  care,  should  have  fared  worse.  Any 
one  who  cannot  see  the  posterior  lobe  in  an  ape's 
brain  is  not  likely  to  give  a  very  valuable  opinion 
respecting  the  posterior  cornu  or  the  hippocampus 
minor.  If  a  man  cannot  see  a  church,  it  is  pre- 
posterous to  take  his  opinion  about  its  altar-piece 
or  painted  window — so  that  I  do  not  feel  bound  to 
enter  upon  any  discussion  of  these  points,  but  con- 
tent myself  with  assuring  the  reader  that  the  pos- 
terior cornu  and  the  hippocampus  minor,  have  now 
been  seen — usually,  at  least  as  well  developed  as  in 
man,  and  often  better — not  only  in  the  Chimpan- 
zee, the  Orang,  and  the  Gibbon,  but  in  all  the  gen- 
era of  the  old  world  baboons  and  monkeys,  and  in 
most  of  the  new  world  forms,  including  the  Mar- 
mosets. 

In  fact,  all  the  abundant  and  trustworthy  evi- 
dence (consisting  of  the  results  of  careful  inves- 


n  PATTERN  OF  CONVOLUTIONS.  139 

tigations  directed  to  the  determination  of  these 
very  questions,  by  skilled  anatomists)  which  we 
now  possess,  leads  to  the  conviction  that,  so  far 
from  the  posterior  lobe,  the  posterior  cornu,  and 
the  hippocampus  minor,  being  structures  peculiar 
to  and  characteristic  of  man,  as  they  have  been 
over  and  over  again  asserted  to  be,  even  after  the 
publication  of  the  clearest  demonstration  of  the 
reverse,  it  is  precisely  these  structures  which  are 
the  most  marked  cerebral  characters  common  to 
man  with  the  apes.  They  are  among  the  most  dis- 
tinctly Simian  peculiarities  which  the  human  or- 
ganism exhibits. 

As  to  the  convolutions,  the  brains  of  the  apes 
exhibit  every  stage  of  progress,  from  the  almost 
smooth  brain  of  the  Marmoset,  to  the  Orang  and 
the  Chimpanzee,  which  fall  but  little  below  Man. 
And  it  is  most  remarkable  that,  as  soon  as  all 
the  principal  sulci  appear,  the  pattern  according 
to  which  they  are  arranged  is  identical  with  that 
of  the  corresponding  sulci  of  man.  The  surface  of 
the  brain  of  a  monkey  exhibits  a  sort  of  skeleton 
map  of  man's,  and  in  the  man-hke  apes  the  details 
become  more  and  more  filled  in,  until  it  is  only 
in  minor  characters,  such  as  the  greater  excavation 
of  the  anterior  lobes,  the  constant  presence  of  fis- 
sures usually  absent  in  man,  and  the  different  dis- 
position and  proportions  of  some  convolutions,  that 
the.  Chimpanzee's  or  the  Orang's  brain  can  be 
structurally  distinguished  from  Man's. 


14:0   MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.     n 

So  far  as  cerebral  structure  goes,  therefore,  it 
is  clear  that  Man  differs  less  from  the  Chimpanzee 
or  the  Orang,  than  these  do  even  from  the  Mon- 
keys, and  that  the  difference  between  the  brains 
of  the  Chimpanzee  and  of  Man  is  almost  insig- 
nificant, when  compared  with  that  between  the 
Chimpanzee  brain  and  that  of  a  Lemur. 

It  must  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  there 
is  a  very  striking  difference  in  absolute  mass  and 
weight  between  the  lowest  human  brain  and  that 
of  the  highest  ape — a  difference  which  is  all  the 
more  remarkable  when  we  recollect  that  a  full- 
grown  Gorilla  is  probably  pretty  nearly  twice  as 
heavy  as  a  Bosjesman,  or  as  many  an  European 
woman.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  a  healthy 
human  adult  brain  ever  weighed  less  than  thirty- 
one  or  two  ounces,  or  that  the  heaviest  Gorilla  brain 
has  exceeded  twenty  ounces. 

This  is  a  very  noteworthy  circumstance,  and 
doubtless  will  one  day  help  to  furnish  an  explana- 
tion of  the  great  gulf  which  intervenes  between  the 
lowest  man  and  the  highest  ape  in  intellectual 
power;  *  but  it  has  little  systematic  value,  for  the 

*  I  say  help  to  furnish :  for  I  by  no  means  believe  that 
it  was  any  original  diiTerence  of  cerebral  quality,  or  quan- 
tity, which  caused  that  divergence  between  the  human 
and  the  pithecoid  stirpes,  which  has  ended  in  the  present 
enormous  gulf  between  them.  It  is  no  doubt  perfectly 
true,  in  a  certain  sense,  that  all  difference  of  function  is  a 
result  of  difference  of  structure;  or,  in  other  words,  of 
difference  in  the  combination  of  the  primary  molecular 
forces  of  living  substance;  and,  starting  from  this  unde- 


ChimpartJiee.  a- 

FiQ.  22. — Drawing  of  the  cerebral  hemisphereg  of  a  Man, 


142       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

and  of  a  Chimpanzee  of  the  same  length,  in  order  to  show 
the  relative  proportions  of  the  parts:  the  former  taken 
from  a  specimen,  which  Mr.  Flower,  Conservator  of  the 
Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  was  good 
enough  to  dissect  for  me;  the  latter,  from  the  photograph 
of  a  similarly  dissected  Chimpanzee's  brain,  given  in  Mr. 
Marshall's  paper  above  referred  to.  c,  posterior  lobe;  ft, 
lateral  ventricle;  c,  posterior  cornu;  x,  the  hippocampus 
minor. 

simple  reason  that,  as  may  be  concluded  from  what 
has  been  already  said  respecting  cranial  capacity, 

niable  axiom,  objectors  occasionally,  and  with  much  seem- 
ing plausibility,  argue  that  the  vast  intellectual  chasm 
between  the  Ape  and  Man  implies  a  corresponding  struc- 
tural chasm  in  the  organs  of  the  intellectual  functions; 
so  that,  it  is  said,  the  non-discovery  of  such  vast  differ- 
ences proves,  not  that  they  are  absent,  but  that  Science  is 
incompetent  to  detect  them.  A  very  little  consideration, 
however,  will,  I  think,  show  the  fallacy  of  this  reasoning. 
Its  validity  hangs  upon  the  assumption,  that  intellectual 
power  depends  altogether  on  the  brain — whereas  the  brain 
is  only  one  condition  out  of  many  on  which  intellectual 
manifestations  depend;  the  others  being,  chiefly,  the  or- 
gans of  the  senses  and  the  motor  apparatuses,  especially 
those  which  are  concerned  in  prehension  and  in  the  pro- 
duction of  articulate  speech. 

A  man  born  dumb,  notwithstanding  his  great  cerebral 
mass  and  his  inheritance  of  strong  intellectual  instincts, 
would  be  capable  of  few  higher  intellectual  manifestations 
than  an  Orang  or  a  Chimpanzee,  if  he  were  confined  to 
thf  society  of  dumb  associates.  And  yet  there  might  not 
be  the  slightest  discernible  difference  between  his  brain 
and  that  of  a  highly  intelligent  and  cultivated  person. 
The  dumbness  might  be  the  result  of  a  defective  innerva- 
tion of  these  parts;  or  it  might  result  from  congenital 
deafness,  caused  by  some  minute  defect  of  the  internal 
ear,  which  only  a  careful  anatomist  could  discover. 

The  argument,  that  because  there  is  an  immense  dif- 
ference between  a  Man's  intelligence  and  an  Ape's,  there- 
fore, there  must  be  an  equally  immense  difference  between 
their  brains,  appears  to  me  to  be  about  as  well  based  as 
the  reasoning  by  which  one  should  endeavour  to  prove 
that,  because  there  is  a  "great  gulf"  between  a  watch 


n  WEIGHT  OF  THE  BRAIN.  143 

the  difference  in  weight  of  brain  between  the 
highest  and  the  lowest  men  is  far  greater,  both 
relatively  and  absolutely,  than  that  between  the 
lowest  man  and  the  highest  ape.  The  latter,  as 
has  been  seen,  is  represented  by,  say  twelve,  ounces 
of  cerebral  substance  absolutely  or  by  38  :  20  rela- 
tively; but  as  the  largest  recorded  human  brain 
weighed  between  65  and  66  ounces,  the  former  dif- 
ference is  represented  by  more  than  33  ounces  abso- 
lutely, or  by  65  :  32  relatively.  Regarded  system- 
atically, the  cerebral  differences  of  man  and  apes, 
are  not  of  more  than  generic  value;  his  Family 
distinction  resting  chiefly  on  his  dentition,  his  pel- 
vis, and  his  lower  limbs. 

Thus,  whatever  system  of  organs  be  studied, 
the  comparison  of  their  modifications  in  the  ape 
series  leads  to  one  and  the  same  result — that  the 
structural  differences  which  separate  Man  from 
the  Gorilla  and  the  Chimpanzee  are  not  so  great 

that  keeps  accurate  time  and  another  that  will  not  go  at 
all,  there  is  therefore  a  great  structural  hiatus  between 
the  two  watches.  A  hair  in  the  balance-wheel,  a  little 
rust  on  a  pinion,  a  bend  in  a  tooth  of  the  escapement,  a 
something  so  slight  that  only  the  practised  eye  of  the 
watchmaker  can  discover  it,  may  be  the  source  of  all  the 
diflference. 

And  believing,  as  T  do,  with  Cuvier,  that  the  possession 
of  articulate  speech  is  the  grand  distinctive  character  of 
man  (whether  it  be  absolutely  peculiar  to  him  or  not),  I 
find  it  very  easy  to  comprehend,  that  some  equally  incon- 
spicuous structural  difference  may  have  been  the  primary 
cause  of  the  immeasurable  and  practically  infinite  diver- 
gence of  the  Human  from  the  Simian  Stirps. 


144       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

as  those  which  separate  the  Gorilla  from  the  lower 
apes. 

But  in  enunciating  this  important  truth  I  must 
guard  myself  against  a  form  of  misunderstanding, 
which  is  very  prevalent.  I  find,  in  fact,  that  those 
who  endeavour  to  teach  what  nature  so  clearly 
shows  us  in  this  matter,  are  liable  to  have  their 
opinions  misrepresented  and  their  phraseology 
garbled,  until  they  seem  to  say  that  the  structural 
differences  between  man  and  even  the  highest  apes 
are  small  and  insignificant.  Let  me  take  this  oppor- 
tunity then  of  distinctly  asserting,  on  the  contrary, 
that  they  are  great  and  significant;  that  every  bone 
of  a  Gorilla  bears  marks  by  which  it  might  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  corresponding  bone  of  a  Man; 
and  that,  in  the  present  creation,  at  any  rate,  no 
intermediate  link  bridges  over  the  gap  between 
Homo  and  Troglodytes. 

It  would  be  no  less  wrong  than  absurd  to  deny 
the  existence  of  this  chasm;  but  it  is  at  least 
equally  wrong  and  absurd  to  exaggerate  its  mag- 
nitude and,  resting  on  the  admitted  fact  of  its 
existence,  to  refuse  to  inquire  whether  it  is  wide 
or  narrow.  Eemember,  if  you  will,  that  there  is 
no  existing  link  between  Man  and  the  Gorilla,  but 
do  not  forget  that  there  is  a  no  less  sharp  line  of 
demarcation,  a  no  less  complete  absence  of  any 
transitional  form,  between  the  Gorilla  and  the 
Orang,  or  the  Orang  and  the  Gibbon.  I  say,  not 
less  sharp,  though  it  is  somewhat  narrower.    The 


n  KAN  ONE  OF  THE  PRIMATES.  I45 

Btructural  differences  between  Man  and  the  Man- 
like apes  certainly  justify  our  regarding  him  as 
constituting  a  family  apart  from  them;  though, 
inasmuch  as  he  differs  less  from  them  than  they 
do  from  other  famihes  of  the  same  order,  there 
can  be  no  justification  for  placing  him  in  a  dis- 
tinct order. 

And  thus  the  sagacious  foresight  of  the  great 
lawgiver  of  systematic  zoology,  Linnagus,  becomes 
justified,  and  a  century  of  anatomical  research 
brings  us  back  to  his  conclusion,  that  man  is  a 
member  of  the  same  order  (for  which  the  Linnsean 
term  Primates  ought  to  be  retained)  as  the  Apes 
and  Lemurs.  This  order  is  now  divisible  into  seven 
families,  of  about  equal  systematic  value:  the 
first,  the  Anthbopini,  contains  Man  alone;  the 
second,  the  Catarhini,  embraces  the  old  world 
apes;  the  third,  the  Plattrhini,  all  new  world 
apes,  except  the  Marmosets;  the  fourth,  the 
Arctopithecini,  contains  the  Marmosets;  the 
fifth,  the  Lemurini,  the  Lemurs — from  which 
Cheiromys  should  probably  be  excluded  to  form  a 
sixth  distinct  family,  the  Cheiromyini;  while  the 
seventh,  the  Galeopithecini,  contains  only  the 
flying  Lemur  Galeopithecus, — a  strange  form  which 
almost  touches  on  the  Bats,  as  the  Cheiromys  puts> 
on  a  Rodent  clothing,  and  the  Lemurs  simulate 
Insectivora. 

Perhaps  no  order  of  mammals  presents  us  with 
80  extraordinary  a  series  of  gradations  as  thii — 
174 


146       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

leading  us  insensibly  from  the  crown  and  summit 
of  the  animal  creation  down  to  creatures,  from 
which  there  is  but  a  step,  as  it  seems,  to  the  low- 
est, smallest,  and  least  intelligent  of  the  placental 
Mammalia.  It  is  as  if  nature  herself  had  fore- 
seen the  arrogance  of  man,  and  with  Eoman 
severity  had  provided  that  his  intellect,  by  its 
very  triumphs,  should  call  into  prominence  the 
slaves,  admonishing  the  conqueror  that  he  is  but 
dust. 

These  are  the  chief  facts,  this  the  immediate 
conclusion  from  them  to  wliich  I  adverted  in  the 
commencement  of  this  Essay.  The  facts,  I  be- 
lieve, cannot  be  disputed;  and  if  so,  the  conclusion 
appears  to  me  to  be  inevitable. 

But  if  Man  be  separated  by  no  greater  struc- 
tural barrier  from  the  brutes  than  they  are  from 
one  another — then  it  seems  to  follow  that  if  any 
process  of  physical  causation  can  be  discovered  by 
which  the  genera  and  families  of  ordinary  animals 
have  been  produced,  that  process  of  causation  is 
amply  sufficient  to  account  for  the  origin  of  Man. 
In  other  words,  if  it  could  be  shown  that  the  Mar- 
mosets, for  example,  have  arisen  by  gradual  modi- 
fication of  the  ordinary  Platyrhini,  or  that  both 
Marmosets  and  Platyrhini  are  modified  rami- 
fications of  a  primitive  stock — then,  there  would 
be  no  rational  ground  for  doubting  that  man  might 
have  originated,  in  the  one  case,  by  the  gradual 


a  THE  ORIGIN  OF  MAN.  I4r7 

modification  of  a  man-like  ape;  or,  in  the  other 
case,  as  a  ramification  of  the  same  primitive  stock 

as  those  apes. 

At  the  present  moment,  but  one  such  process 
of  physical  causation  has  any  evidence  in  its  fa- 
vour; or,  in  other  words,  there  is  but  one  hypoth- 
esis regarding  the  origin  of  species  of   animals 
in    general    which    has    any    scientific    existence 
—that    propounded   by    Mr.    Darwin.      For    La- 
marck,   sagacious    as   many    of    his    views    were, 
mingled    them    with    so    much    that    was    crude 
and   even   absurd,   as   to   neutralize   the   benefit 
which  his  originality  might  have  eifected,  had  he 
been  a  more  sober  and  cautious  thinker;  and  though 
I  have  heard  of  the  announcement  of  a  formula 
touching  "the  ordained  continuous  becoming  of 
organic  forms,"  it  is  obvious  that  it  is  the  first 
duty  of  a  hypothesis  to  be  intelligible,  and  that 
a  qua-qua-versal  proposition  of  this  kind,  which 
may  be   read   backwards,   or   forwards,    or   side- 
ways, with  exactly  the  same  amount  of  significa- 
tion, does  not  really  exist,  though  it  may  seem  to 

do  so. 

At  the  present  moment,  therefore,  the  question 
of  the  relation  of  man  to  the  lower  animals  re- 
solves itself,  in  the  end,  into  the  larger  question 
of  the  tenability,  or  untenability,  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
views.  But  here  we  enter  upon  difficult  ground, 
and  it  behoves  us  to  define  our  exact  position  with 
the  greatest  care. 


X48       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

It  cannot  be  doubted,  I  think,  that  Mr.  Dar- 
win has  satisfactorily  proved  that  what  he  terms 
selection,  or  selective  modification,  must  occur, 
and  does  occur,  in  nature;  and  he  has  also  proved 
to  superfluity  that  such  selection  is  competent  to 
produce  forms  as  distinct,  structurally,  as  some 
genera  even  are.  If  the  animated  world  presented 
us  with  none  but  structural  differences,  I  should 
have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  Mr.  Darwin  had 
demonstrated  the  existence  of  a  true  physical  cause, 
amply  competent  to  account  for  the  origin  of  liv- 
ing species,  and  of  man  among  the  rest. 

But,  in  addition  to  their  structural  distinctions, 
the  species  of  animals  and  plants,  or  at  least 
a  great  number  of  them,  exhibit  physiological  ^ 
characters — what  are  known  as  distinct  species, '^ 
structurally,  being  for  the  most  part  either  alto- 
gether incompetent  to  breed  one  with  another;  or 
if  they  breed,  the  resulting  mule,  or  hybrid,  is 
unable  to  perpetuate  its  race  with  another  hybrid 
of  the  same  kind. 

A  true  physical  cause  is,  however,  admitted  to 
be  such  only  on  one  condition — that  it  shall 
account  for  all  the  phenomena  which  come  within 
the  range  of  its  operation.  If  it  is  inconsistent 
with  any  one  phenomenon,  it  must  be  rejected; 
if  it  fails  to  explain  any  one  phenomenon,  it  is  so 
far  weak,  so  far  to  be  suspected;  though  it  may 
have  a  perfect  right  to  claim  provisional  accept- 
ance. 


n  DARWIN'S  HYPOTHESIS.  149 

Now,  Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis  is  not,  so  far  as 
I  am  aware,  inconsistent  with  any  known  biological 
fact;  on  the  contrary,  if  admitted,  the  facts  of  De- 
velopment, of  Comparative  Anatomy,  of  Geo- 
graphical Distribution,  and  of  Palasontology,  be- 
come connected  together,  and  exhibit  a  meaning 
such  as  they  never  possessed  before;  and  I,  for 
one,  am  fully  convinced,  that  if  not  precisely 
true,  that  hypothesis  is  as  near  an  approxima- 
tion to  the  truth  as,  for  example,  the  Copernican 
hypothesis  was  to  the  true  theory  of  the  planetary 
motions. 

But,  for  all  this,  our  acceptance  of  the  Dar- 
winian hypothesis  must  be  provisional  so  long  as 
one  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence  is  wanting;  and 
60  long  as  all  the  animals  and  plants  certainly  pro- 
duced by  selective  breeding  from  a  common  stock 
are  fertile,  and  their  progeny  are  fertile  with  one 
another,  that  link  will  be  wanting.  For,  so  long, 
selective  breeding  will  not  be  proved  to  be  com- 
petent to  do  all  that  is  required  of  it  to  produce 
natural  species. 

I  have  put  this  conclusion  as  strongly  as 
possible  before  the  reader,  because  the  last  posi- 
tion in  which  I  wish  to  find  myself  is  that  of  an 
advocate  for  Mr.  Darwin's,  or  any  other  views;  if 
by  an  advocate  is  meant  one  whose  business  it  is 
to  smooth  over  real  difficulties,  and  to  persuade 
where  he  cannot  convince. 

In  justice  to  Mr.  Darwin,  however,  it  must  be 


150       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANBIALS.  if 

admitted  that  the  conditions  of  fertility  and  steril- 
ity are  very  ill  understood,  and  that  every  day's 
advance  in  knowledge  leads  us  to  regard  the  hiatus 
in  his  evidence  as  of  less  and  less  importance,  when 
set  against  the  multitude  of  facts  which  harmonize 
with,  or  receive  an  explanation  from,  his  doc- 
trines. 

I  adopt  Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis,  therefore,  sub- 
ject to  the  production  of  proof  that  physiological 
species  may  be  produced  by  selective  breeding;  just 
as  a  physical  philosopher  may  accept  the  undu- 
latory  theory  of  Hght,  subject  to  the  proof  of  the 
existence  of  the  hypothetical  ether;  or  as  the  chem- 
ist adopts  the  atomic  theory,  subject  to  the  proof 
of  the  existence  of  atoms;  and  for  exactly  the  same 
reasons,  namely,  that  it  has  an  immense  amount 
of  prima  facie  probabiHty:  that  it  is  the  only  means 
at  present  within  reach  of  reducing  the  chaos  of 
observed  facts  to  order;  and  lastly,  that  it  is  the 
most  powerful  instrument  of  investigation  which 
has  been  presented  to  naturahsts  since  the  inven- 
tion of  the  natural  system  of  classification,  and 
the  commencement  of  the  systematic  study  of 
embryology. 

But  even  leaving  Mr.  Darwin's  views  aside,  the 
whole  analogy  of  natural  operations  furnishes  so 
complete  and  crushing  an  argument  against  the 
intervention  of  any  but  what  are  termed  secondary 
causes,  in  the  production  of  all  the  phenomena  of 
the  universe;  that,  in  view  of  the  intimate  rela- 


OBJECTIONS:  SENTIMENTAL  AND  OTHER.   151 

tions  between  Man  and  the  rest  of  the  living 
world,  and  between  the  forces  exerted  by  the  lat- 
ter and  all  other  forces,  I  can  see  no  excuse  for 
doubting  that  all  are  co-ordinated  terms  of 
Nature's  great  progression,  from  the  formless 
to  the  formed — from  the  inorganic  to  the  or- 
ganic— from  blind  force  to  conscious  intellect  and 
will. 

Science  has  fulfilled  her  function  when  she  has 
ascertained  and  enunciated  truth;  and  were  these 
pages  addressed  to  men  of  science  only,  I  should 
now  close  this  Essay,  knowing  that  my  colleagues 
have  learned  to  respect  nothing  but  evidence,  and 
to  believe  that  their  highest  duty  lies  in  sub- 
mitting to  it,  however  it  may  jar  against  their  in- 
clinations. 

But,  desiring,  as  I  do,  to  reach  the  wider  circle 
of  the  intelligent  pubhc,  it  would  be  unworthy 
cowardice  were  I  to  ignore  the  repugnance  with 
which  the  majority  of  my  readers  are  likely  to 
meet  the  conclusions  to  which  the  most  careful  and 
conscientious  study  I  have  been  able  to  give  to 
this  matter,  has  led  me. 

On  all  sides  I  shall  hear  the  cry — "  We  are  men 
and  women,  not  a  mere  better  sort  of  apes,  a  little 
longer  in  the  leg,  more  compact  in  the  foot,  and 
bigger  in  brain  than  your  brutal  Chimpanzees  and 
Gorillas.  The  power  of  knowledge — the  conscience 
of  good  and  evil — the  pitiful  tenderness  of  human 
affections,  raise  us  out  of  all  real  fellowship  with 


152       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS,  n 

the  brutes,  however  closely  they  may  seem  to  ap- 
proximate us." 

To  this  I  can  only  reply  that  the  exclamation 
would  he  most  just  and  would  have  my  own  entire 
sympathy,  if  it  were  only  relevant.    But,  it  is  not 
I  who  seek  to  base  Man's  dignity  upon  his  great 
toe,  or  insinuate  that  we  are  lost  if  an  Ape  has  a 
hippocampus  minor.    On  the  contrary,  I  have  done 
my  best  to  sweep  away  this  vanity.     I  have  en- 
deavoured to  show  that  no  absolute  structural  line 
of  demarcation,  wider  than  that  between  the  ani- 
mals which  immediately  succeed  us  in  the  scale, 
can  be  drawn  between  the  animal  world  and  our- 
selves; and  I  may  add  the  expression  of  my  belief 
that  the  attempt  to  draw  a  psychical  distinction 
is  equally  futile,  and  that  even  the  highest  facul- 
ties of  feeling  and  of  intellect  begin  to  germinate 
in  lower  forms  of  life.*    At  the  same  time,  no  one 
is  more  strongly  convinced  than  I  am  of  the  vast- 
ness  of  the  gulf  between  civilised  man  and  the 
brutes;  or  is  more  certain  that  whether  from  them 
or  not,  he  is  assuredly  not  of  them.     No  one  is 
less    disposed    to    think    likely    of    the    present 
dignity,    or    despairingly    of    the    future    hopes, 

*  It  is  so  rare  a  pleasure  for  me  to  find  Professor 
Owen's  opinions  in  entire  accordance  with  my  own,  that  I 
cannot  forbear  from  quoting  a  paragraph  which  appeared 
in  his  Essav  "  On  the  Characters,  &c.,  of  the  Class  Mam- 
malia," in  the  Journal  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  Linnean 
Society  of  London  for  1857,  but  is  unaccountably  omitted 
in  the  "  Reade  Lecture  "  delivered  before  the  University 
of  Cambridge  two  years  later,  which  is  otherwise  nearly 
a  reprint  of  the  paper  in  question.    Prof.  Owen  irritee: 


n  OBJECTIONS.  153 

of  the  only  consciously  intelligent  denizen  of  this 
world. 

-  We  are  indeed  told  by  those  who  assume  author- 
ity in  these  matters,  that  the  two  sets  of  opinions 
are  incompatible,  and  that  the  belief  in  the  unity 
of  origin  of  man  and  brutes  involves  the  brutaliza- 
tion  and  degradation  of  the  former.  But  is  this 
really  so?  Could  not  a  sensible  cliild  confute  by 
obvious  arguments,  the  shallow  rhetoricians  who 
would  force  this  conclusion  upon  us?  Is  it,  in- 
deed, true,  that  the  Poet,  or  the  Philosopher,  or 
the  Artist  whose  genius  is  the  glory  of  his  age, 
is  degraded  from  his  high  estate  by  the  undoubted 
historical  probability,  not  to  say  certainty,  that  he 
is  the  direct  descendant  of  some  naked  and  bestial 
savage,  whose  intelligence  was  just  sufficient  to 
make  him  a  little  more  cunning  than  the  Fox,  and 
by  so  much  more  dangerous  than  the  Tiger?  Or  is 
he  bound  to  howl  and  grovel  on  all  fours  because  of 

"  Not  being  able  to  appreciate  or  conceive  of  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  psychical  phenomena  of  a  Chimpan- 
zee and  of  a  Eoschisman  or  of  an  Aztec,  ^vith  arrested 
brain  growth,  as  being  of  a  nature  so  essential  as  to  pre- 
clude a  comparison  between  them,  or  as  being  other  than 
a  difference  of  degree,  I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to  the  sig- 
nificance of  that  all-pers'ading  similitude  of  structure — 
every  tooth,  every  bone,  strictly  homologous — which 
makes  the  determination  of  the  difference  between  Homo 
and  Pithecvs  the  anatomist's  difficulty." 

Surely  it  is  a  little  singular,  that  the  "  anatomist," 
who  finds  it  "  difficult  "  to  determine  "  the  difference  "  be- 
tween Homo  and  Pithecus,  should  yet  range  them  on 
anatomical  grounds,  in  distinct  sub-classes. 


154:       MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

the  wholly  unquestionable  fact,  that  he  was  once 
an  egg,  which  no  ordinal}-  power  of  discrimination 
could  distinguish  from  that  of  a  Dog?  Or  is  the 
philanthropist,  or  the  saint,  to  give  up  his  en- 
deavours to  lead  a  noble  life,  because  the  simplest 
study  of  man's  nature  reveals,  at  its  foundations, 
all  the  selfish  passions,  and  fierce  appetites  of  the 
merest  quadruped?  Is  mother-love  vile  because  a 
hen  shows  it,  or  fidelity  base  because  dogs  pos- 
sess it? 

The  common  sense  of  the  mass  of  mankind 
will  answer  these  questions  without  a  moment's 
hesitation.  Healthy  humanity,  finding  itself  hard 
pressed  to  escape  from  real  sin  and  degrada- 
tion, will  leave  the  brooding  over  speculative 
pollution  to  the  cynics  and  the  "  righteous  over- 
much "  who,  disagreeing  in  everything  else, 
unite  in  blind  insensibility  to  the  nobleness 
of  the  visible  world,  and  in  inabiUty  to  appre- 
ciate the  grandeur  of  the  place  Man  occupies 
therein. 

Nay  more,  thoiightful  men,  once  escaped  from 
the  Winding  influences  of  traditional  prejudice, 
will  find  in  the  lowly  stock  whence  Man  has 
sprung,  the  best  evidence  of  the  splendour  of  his 
capacities;  and  will  discern  in  his  long  progress 
through  the  Past,  a  reasonable  ground  of  faith  in 
his  attainment  of  a  nobler  Future.  -. 

They  will  remember  that  in  comparing  civihsed 
man  with  the  animal  world,  one  is  as  the  Alpine 


n 


OBJECTIONS.  155 


traveller,  who  sees  the  mountains  soaring  into  the 
sky  and  can  hardly  discern  where  the  deep 
shadowed  crags  and  roseate  peaks  end,  and  where 
the  clouds  of  heaven  begin.  Surely  the  awe- 
struck voyager  may  be  excused  if,  at  first,  he  re- 
fuses to  believe  the  geologist,  who  tells  him  that 
these  glorious  masses  are,  after  all,  the  hardened 
mud  of  primeval  seas,  or  the  cooled  slag  of 
subterranean  furnaces— of  one  substance  with 
the  dullest  clay,  but  raised  by  inward  forces 
to  that  place  of  proud  and  seemingly  inaccessible 

glory. 

But  the  geologist  is  right;  and  due  reflection 
on  his  teachings,  instead  of  diminishing  our  rever- 
ence and  our  wonder,  adds  all  the  force  of  intel- 
lectual sublimity  to  the  mere  aesthetic  intuition  of 
the  uninstructed  beholder. 

~A.nd  after  passion  and   prejudice  have   died 
away,  the  same  result  will  attend  the  teachings  of 
the  naturalist  respecting  that  great  Alps  and  Andes 
of  the  living  world — Man.    Our  reverence  for  the 
nobility  of  manhood  will  not  be  lessened  by  the 
knowledge  that  Man  is,  in  substance  and  in  struc- 
ture, one  with  the  brutes;  for,  he  alone  possesses 
the    marvellous    endowment   of    intelligible    and 
rational  speech,  whereby,  in  the  secular  period 
of  his  existence,  he  has  slowly  accumulated  and 
organised  the  experience  which  is  almost  wholly 
lost  with  the  cessation  of  every  individual  life 
in  other  animals;  so  that,  now,  he  stands  raised 


156        MAN  AND  THE  LOWER  ANIMALS.  n 

upon  it  as  on  a  mountain  top,  far  above  the 
level  of  his  humble  fellows,  and  transfigured 
from  his  .grosser  nature  by  reflecting,  here 
and  there,  a  ray  from  the  infinite  source  •f 
truth. 


III. 

ON  SOME  FOSSIL  REMAINS  OF  MAN. 

I  HAVE  endeavoured  to  show,  in  the  preceding 
Essay,  that  the  Anthropini,  or  Man  Family,  form 
a  rery  well-defined  group  of  the  Primates,  between 
which  and  the  immediately  following  Family,  the 
Catarhini,  there  is,  in  the  existing  world,  the 
same  entire  absence  of  any  transitional  form  or 
connecting  link,  as  between  the  Catarhini  and 
Platyrhini. 

It  is  a  commonly  received  doctrine,  however, 
that  the  structural  intervals  between  the  various 
existing  modifications  of  organic  beings  may  be 
diminished,  or  even  obliterated,  if  we  take  into 
account  the  long  and  varied  succession  of  animals 
and  plants  which  have  preceded  these  now  living 
and  which  are  known  to  us  only  by  their  fossilized 
remains.  How  far  this  doctrine  is  well  based,  how 
far,  on  the  other  hand,  as  our  knowledge  at  pres- 
ent stands,  it  is  an  overstatement  of  the  real  facts 
of  the  case,  and  an  exaggeration  of  the  conclusions 
fairly  deducible  from  them,  are  points  of  grave  im- 
portance, but  into  the  discussion  of  which  I  do  not, 

157 


158  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

at  present,  propose  to  enter.  It  is  enough  that 
such  a  view  of  the  relations  of  extinct  to  Hving 
beings  lias  been  propounded,  to  lead  us  to  inquire, 
with  anxiety,  how  far  the  recent  discoveries  of 
human  remains  in  a  fossil  state  bear  out,  or  oppose, 
that  view. 

I  shall  confine  myself,  in  discussing  this  ques- 
tion, to  those  fragmentary  Human  skulls  from  the 
caves  of  Engis  in  the  valley  of  the  Mouse,  in  Bel- 
gium, and  of  the  Neanderthal,  near  Diisseldorf, 
the  geological  relations  of  which  have  been  ex- 
amined with  so  much  care  by  Sir  Charles  Lyell; 
upon  whose  high  authority  I  shall  take  it  for 
granted,  that  the  Engis  skull  belonged  to  a  con- 
temporary of  the  Mammoth  {Elephas  primigenius) 
and  of  the  woolly  Ehinoceros  (Rhinoceros  ticlior- 
hinus),  with  the  bones  of  which  it  was  found  asso- 
ciated; and  that  the  Neanderthal  skull  is  of  great, 
though  uncertain,  antiquity.  Whatever  be  the 
geological  age  of  the  latter  skull,  I  conceive  it  is 
quite  safe  (on  the  ordinary  principles  of  paleon- 
tological  reasoning)  to  assume  that  the  former 
takes  us  to,  at  least,  the  further  side  of  the  vague 
biological  limit,  which  separates  the  present  geo- 
logical epoch  from  that  which  immediately  pre- 
ceded it.  And  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
physical  geography  of  Europe  has  changed  won- 
derfully, since  the  bones  of  Men  and  Mammoths, 
Hyaenas  and  Rhinoceroses  were  washed  pell-mell 
into  the  cave  of  Engis. 


m 


THE  MAN  OF  ENGIS. 


159 


The  skull  from  the  cave  of  Engis  was  originally 
discovered  by  Professor  Schmerling,  and  was  de* 
scribed  by  him,  together  with  other  human  re- 


Fig.  23. — The  skull  from  the  cave  of  Engis — viewed 
from  the  riorht  side.  One  half  the  size  of  nature,  a  gla- 
bella, 6  occipital  protuberance  (a  to  6  glabello-occipital 
line),  c  auditory  foramen. 


mains  disinterred  at  the  same  time,  in  his  valuable 
work,  "  Recherches  sur  les  Ossemens  fossiles  decou- 
verts  dans  les  Cavernes  de  la  Province  de  Liege/* 


160  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

published  in  1833  (p.  59,  et  seq.),  from  which  the 
following  paragraphs  are  extracted,  the  precise  ex- 
pressions of  the  author  being,  as  far  as  possible, 
preserved. 

"  In  the  first  place,  I  must  remark  that  these  human; 
remains,  which  are  in  my  possession,  are  characterised, 
like  the  thousands  of  bones  which  I  have  lately  been  dis- 
interring, by  the  extent  of  the  decomposition  which  they 
have  undergone,  which  is  precisely  the  same  as  that  of  the 
extinct  species:  all,  with  a  few  exceptions,  are  broken; 
some  few  are  rounded,  as  is  frequently  found  to  be  the 
case  in  fossil  remains  of  other  species.    The  fractures  are 
vertical  or  oblique;  none  of  them  are  eroded;  their  colour 
does  not  differ  from  that  of  other  fossil  bones,  and  varies 
from  whitish  yellow  to  blackish.     All  are  lighter  than  re-^ 
cent  bones,  with  the  exception  of  those  which  have  a  cal- 
careous incrustation,  and  the  cavities  of  which  are  filled 
with  such  matter. 

"  The  cranium  which  I  have  caused  to  be  figured,  Plate- 
I,  figs.  1,  2,  is  that  of  an  old  person.  The  sutures  are  be- 
ginning to  be  effaced:  all  the  facial  bones  are  wanting,, 
and  of  the  temporal  bones  only  a  fragment  of  that  of 
the  right  side  is  preserved. 

"  The  face  and  the  base  of  the  cranium  had  been  de- 
tached before  the  skiill  was  deposited  in  the  cave,  for  we 
w^ere  unable  to  find  those  parts,  though  the  whole  cavern 
was  regularly  searched.  The  cranium  was  met  with  at  a 
depth  of  a  metre  and  a  half  [five  feet  nearly]  hidden' 
under  an  osseous  breccia,  composed  of  the  remains  of 
small  animals,  and  containing  one  rhinoceros'  tusk,  with 
several  teeth  of  horses  and  of  ruminants.  This  breccia, 
which  has  been  spoken  of  above  (p.  31),  was  a  metre  [3 J 
feet  about]  wide,  and  rose  to  the  height  of  a  metre  and  a 
half  above  the  floor  of  the  cavern,  to  the  walla  of  which  it. 
adhered  strongly. 


ra  THE  ENGIS  SKULL.  161 

"  The  earth  which  contained  this  human  skull  ex- 
hibited no  trace  of  disturbance :  teeth  of  rhinoceros,  horse, 
hyaena,  and  bear,  surrounded  it  on  all  sides. 

"  The  famous  Blumenbach  *  has  directed  attention  to 
the  differences  presented  by  the  form  and  the  dimensions 
of  human  crania  of  diflferent  races.  This  important  work 
would  have  assisted  us  greatly,  if  the  face,  a  part  essen- 
tial for  the  determination  of  race,  with  more  or  less  ac- 
curacy, had  not  been  wanting  in  our  fossil  cranium. 

"  We  are  convinced  that  even  if  the  skull  had  been 
complete,  it  would  not  have  been  possible  to  pronounce, 
with  certainty,  upon  a  single  specimen;  for  individual 
variations  are  so  numerous  in  the  crania  of  one  and  the 
same  race,  that  one  cannot,  without  laying  one's  self  open 
to  large  chances  of  error,  draw  any  inference  from  a  single 
fragment  of  a  cranium  to  the  general  form  of  the  head  to 
which  it  belonged. 

"  Nevertheless,  in  order  to  neglect  no  point  respecting 
the  form  of  this  fossil  skull,  we  may  observe  that,  from  the 
first,  the  elongated  and  narrow  form  of  the  forehead  at- 
tracted our  attention. 

"  In  fact,  the  slight  elevation  of  the  frontal,  its  narrow- 
ness, and  the  form  of  the  orbit,  approximate  it  more 
nearly  to  the  cranium  of  an  Ethiopian  than  to  that  of  an 
European;  the  elongated  form  and  the  produced  occiput 
are  also  characters  which  we  believe  to  be  observable  in 
our  fossil  cranium;  but  to  remove  all  doubt  upon  that 
subject  I  have  caused  the  contours  of  the  cranium  of  an 
European  and  of  an  Ethiopian  to  be  drawn  and  the  fore- 
heads represented.  Plate  II,  Figs.  1  and  2,  and,  in  the 
same  plate.  Figs.  3  and  4,  will  render  the  diflferences  easily 
distinguishable;  and  a  single  glance  at  the  figures  will 
be  more  instructive  than  a  long  and  wearisome  descrip- 
tion. 


•  Decas  Collectionis  suw  cranwrum  diversamm  gen- 
tium illustrata.—Gottmgsi,  1790-1820. 

175 


162  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  in 

"  At  whatever  conclusion  we  may  arrive  as  to  the 
origin  of  the  man  from  whence  this  fossil  skull  proceeded, 
we  may  express  an  opinion  without  exposing  ourselves  to 
a  fruitless  controversy.  Each  may  adopt  the  hypothesis 
which  seems  to  him  most  probable:  for  my  own  part,  I 
hold  it  to  be  demonstrated  that  this  cranium  has  belonged 
to  a  person  of  limited  intellectual  faculties,  and  we  con- 
clude thence  that  it  belonged  to  a  man  of  a  low  degree 
of  civilization:  a  deduction  which  is  borne  out  by  con- 
trasting the  capacity  of  the  frontal  with  that  of  the  oc- 
cipital region. 

"  Another  cranium  of  a  young  individual  was  discov- 
ered in  the  floor  of  the  cavern  beside  the  tooth  of  an  ele- 
phant ;  the  skull  was  entire  when  found,  but  the  moment  it 
was  lifted  it  fell  into  pieces,  which  I  have  not,  as  yet,  been 
able  to  put  together  again.  But  I  have  represented  the 
bones  of  the  upper  jaw,  Plate  I,  Fig.  5.  The  state  of  the 
alveoli  and  the  teeth,  shows  that  the  molars  had  not  yet 
pierced  the  gum.  Detached  milk  molars  and  some  frag- 
ments of  a  human  skull,  proceed  from  this  same  place. 
The  figure  3  represents  a  human  superior  incisor  tooth, 
the  size  of  which  is  truly  remarkable.* 

"  Figure  4  is  a  fragment  of  a  superior  maxillary  bone, 
the  molar  teeth  of  which  are  worn  down  to  the  roots. 

"  I  possess  two  vertebrse,  a  first  and  last  dorsal. 

"A  clavicle  of  the  left  side  (see  Plate  III,  Fig.  1); 
although  it  belonged  to  a  young  individual,  this  bone 
shows  that  he  must  have  been  of  great  stature.f 

"  Two  fragments  of  the  radius,  badly  preserved,  do  not 


*  In  a  subsequent  passage,  Schmevling  remarks  upon 
the  occurrence  of  an  incisor  tooth  "  of  enormous  size  " 
from  the  caverns  of  Engihoul.  The  tooth  figured  is  some- 
what long,  but  its  dimensions  do  not  appear  to  me  to 
be  otherwise  remarkable. 

t  The  figure  of  this  clavicle  measures  5  inches  from  end 
to  end  in  a  straight  line — so  that  the  bone  is  rather  a 
small  than  a  large  one. 


m  THE  ENGIS  SKULL.  163 

indicate  that  the  height  of  the  man,  to  whom  they  be- 
longed, exceeded  five  feet  and  a  half. 

"  As  to  the  remains  of  the  upper  extremities,  those 
which  are  in  my  possession  consist  merely  of  a  frag- 
ment of  an  ulna  and  of  a  radius  (Plate  III,  Figs.  5 
and  6), 

"  Figure  2,  Plate  IV,  represents  a  metacarpal  bone, 
contained  in  the  breccia,  of  which  we  have  spoken;  it 
was  found  in  the  lower  part  above  the  cranium:  add  to 
this  some  metacarpal  bones,  found  at  very  different  dis- 
tances, half-a-dozen  metatarsals,  three  phalanges  of  the 
hand,  and  one  of  the  foot. 

"  This  is  a  brief  enumeration  of  the  remains  of  human 
bones  collected  in  the  cavern  of  Engis,  which  has  pre- 
served for  us  the  remains  of  three  individuals,  surrounded 
by  those  of  the  Elephant,  of  the  Rhinoceros,  and  of  Car- 
nivora  of  species  unknown  in  the  present  creation." 

From  the  cave  of  Engihoul,  opposite  that  of 
Engis,  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Meuse,  Sehmerling 
obtained  the  remains  of  three  other  individuals  of 
Man,  among  which  were  only  two  fragments  of 
parietal  bones,  but  many  bones  of  the  extremities. 
In  one  case,  a  broken  fragment  of  an  ulna  was 
soldered  to  a  like  fragment  of  a  radius  by  stalag- 
mite, a  condition  frequently  observed  among  the 
bones  of  the  Cave  Bear  {Ursus  spelceus),  found  in 
the  Belgian  caverns. 

It  was  in  the  cavern  of  Engis  that  Professor 
Sehmerling  found,  incrusted  with  stalagmite  and 
joined  to  a  stone,  the  pointed  bone  implement, 
which  he  has  figured  in  Fig.  7  of  his  Plate 
XXXVI,  and  worked  flints  were  found  by  him  in 


164  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

all  those  Belgian  caves,  which  contained  an  abun- 
dance of  fossil  bones. 

A  short  letter  from  M.  Geoffroy  St.  Hilaire, 
published  in  the  "  Comptes  Rendus  "  of  the  Acad- 
emy of  Sciences  of  Paris,  for  July  2nd,  1838,  speaks 
of  a  visit  (and  apparently  a  very  hasty  one)  paid 
to  the  collection  of  Professor  "  Schermidt  "  (which 
is  presumably  a  misprint  for  Schmerling)  at  Liege. 
The  writer  briefly  criticises  the  drawings  which 
illustrate  Schmerling's  work,  and  affirms  that  the 
"  human  cranium  is  a  little  longer  than  it  is  repre- 
sented "  in  Schmerling's  figure.  The  only  other 
remark  worth  quoting  is  this: — 

"  The  aspect  of  the  human  bones  differs  little  from 
that  of  the  cave  bones,  with  which  we  are  familiar,  and 
of  which  there  is  a  considerable  collection  in  the  same 
place.  With  respect  to  their  special  forms,  compared  with 
those  of  the  varieties  of  recent  human  crania,  few  certain 
conclusions  can  be  put  forward;  for  much  greater  dif- 
ferences exist  between  the  different  specimens  of  well- 
characterized  varieties,  than  between  the  fossil  cranium 
of  Li^ge  and  that  of  one  of  those  varieties  selected  as  a 
term  of  comparison." 

Geoffroy  St.  Hilaire's  remarks  are,  it  will  be 
observed,  little  but  an  echo  of  the  philosophic 
doubts  of  the  describer  and  discoverer  of  the  re- 
mains. As  to  the  critique  upon  Schmerling's  fig- 
ures, I  find  that  the  side  view  given  by  the  latter 
is  really  about  ^^ths  of  an  inch  shorter  than  the 
original,  and  that  the  front  view  is  diminished  to 


m  THE  ENGIS  SKULL.  165 

about  the  same  extent.  Otherwise  the  representa- 
tion is  not,  in  any  way,  inaccurate,  but  corresponds 
very  well  with  the  cast  which  is  in  my  possession. 

A  piece  of  the  occipital  bone,  which  Schmerling 
seems  to  have  missed,  has  since  been  fitted  on  to 
the  rest  of  the  cranium  by  an  accomplished  anat- 
omist, Dr.  Spring  of  Liege,  under  whose  direction 
an  excellent  plaster  cast  was  made  for  Sir  Charles 
Lyell.  It  is  upon  and  from  a  duplicate  of  that  cast 
that  my  own  observations  and  the  accompanying 
figures,  the  outlines  of  which  are  copied  from  very 
accurate  Camera  lucida  drawings,  by  my  friend 
Mr.  Busk,  reduced  to  one-half  of  the  natural  size, 
are  made. 

As  Professor  Schmerling  observes,  the  base  of 
the  skull  is  destroyed,  and  the  facial  bones  are  en- 
tirely absent;  but  the  roof  of  the  cranium,  consist- 
ing of  the  frontal,  parietal,  and  the  greater  part 
of  the  occipital  bones,  as  far  as  the  middle  of  the 
occipital  foramen,  is  entire,  or  nearly  so.  The  left 
temporal  bone  is  wanting.  Of  the  right  temporal, 
the  parts  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  the 
auditory  foramen,  the  mastoid  process,  and  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  squamous  element  of  the 
temporal  are  well  preserved  (Fig.  23). 

The  lines  of  fracture  which  remain  between  the 
coadjusted  pieces  of  the  skull,  and  are  faithfully 
displayed  in  Schmerling's  figure,  are  readily  trace- 
able in  the  cast.  The  sutures  are  also  discernible, 
but  the  complex  disposition  of  their  serrations. 


Fig.  24.— The  Engis  skull  viewed  from  above  (A)  and  in 

front  (B). 


in  THE  ENGIS  SKULL.  167 

shown  in  the  figure,  is  not  obvious  in  the  cast. 
Though  the  ridges  which  give  attachment  to 
muscles  are  not  excessively  prominent,  they  are 
well  marked,  and  taken  together  with  the  appar- 
ently well  developed  frontal  sinuses,  and  the  condi- 
tion of  the  sutures,  leave  no  doubt  on  my  mind 
that  the  skull  is  that  of  an  adult,  if  not  middle- 
aged  man. 

The  extreme  length  of  the  skull  is  7.7  inches. 
Its  extreme  breadth,  which  corresponds  very  nearly 
with  the  interval  between  the  parietal  protuber- 
ances, is  not  more  than  5.4  inches.  The  propor- 
tion of  the  length  to  the  breadth  is  therefore  very 
nearly  as  100  to  70..  If  a  line  be  drawn  from  the 
point  at  which  the  brow  curves  in  towards  the 
root  of  the  nose,  and  which  is  called  the  "  glabella  " 
(a),  (Fig.  33),  to  the  occipital  protuberance  (h),  and 
the  distance  to  the  highest  point  of  the  arch  of  the 
skull  be  measured  perpendicularly  from  this  line, 
it  will  be  found  to  be  4.75  inches.  Viewed  from 
above,  Fig.  24,  A,  the  forehead  presents  an  evenly 
rounded  curve,  and  passes  into  the  contour  of  the 
sides  and  back  of  the  skull,  which  describes  a  toler- 
ably regular  elliptical  curve. 

The  front  view  (Fig.  24,  B)  shows  that  the  roof 
of  the  skull  was  very  regularly  and  elegantly 
arched  in  the  transverse  direction,  and  that  the 
transverse  diameter  was  a  little  less  below  the  pari- 
etal protuberances,  than  above  them.  The  fore- 
head cannot  be  called  narrow  in  relation  to  the  rest 


168  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

of  the  skull,  nor  can  it  be  called  a  retreating  fore- 
head; on  the  contrary,  the  antero-posterior  con- 
tour of  the  skull  is  well  arched,  so  that  the  dis- 
tance along  that  contour,  from  the  nasal  depres- 
sion to  the  occipital  protuberance,  measures  about 
13.75  inches.  The  transverse  arc  of  the  skull, 
measured  from  one  auditory  foramen  to  the  other, 
across  the  middle  of  the  sagittal  suture,  is  about 
13  inches.  The  sagittal  suture  itself  is  5.5  inches 
long. 

The  supraciliary  prominences  or  brow-ridges 
(on  each  side  of  a.  Fig  23)  are  well,  but  not  ex- 
cessively, developed,  and  are  separated  by  a  median 
depression.  Their  principal  elevation  is  disposed 
so  obliquely  that  I  judge  them  to  be  due  to  large 
frontal  sinuses. 

If  a  line  joining  the  glabella  and  the  occipital 
protuberance  (a,  b,  Fig.  23)  be  made  horizontal,  no 
part  of  the  occipital  region  projects  more  than  ^V^h 
of  an  inch  behind  the  posterior  extremity  of  that 
line,  and  the  upper  edge  of  the  auditory  foramen 
(c)  is  almost  in  contact  with  a  line  drawn  parallel 
with  this  upon  the  outer  surface  of  the  skull. 

A  transverse  line  drawn  from  one  auditory  fora- 
men to  the  other  traverses,  as  usual,  the  fore  part  of 
the  occipital  foramen.  The  capacity  of  the  interior 
of  this  fragmentary  skull  has  not  been  ascertained. 

The  history  of  the  Human  remains  from  the 
cavern  in  the  Neanderthal  may  best  be  given  in 


m 


THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  169 


the  words  of  their  original  describer.  Dr.  SchaafE- 
hausen,*  as  translated  by  Mr.  Busk. 

"  In  the  early  part  of  the  year  1857,  a  human  skeleton 
was  discovered  in  a  limestone  cave  in  the  Neanderthal, 
near  Hochdal,  between  Dusseldorf  and  Elberfeld.    Of  this, 
however,  I  was  unable  to  procure  more  than  a  plaster 
cast  of  the  cranium,  taken  at  Elberfeld,  from  which  I 
drew  up  an  account  of  its  remarkable  conformation,  which 
was,  in  the  first  instance,  read  on  the  4th  of  February, 
1857,  at  the  meeting  of  the  Lower  Rhine  Medical  and 
Natural  History  Society,   at  Bonn.t     Subsequently   Dr. 
Fuhlrott,  to  whom  science  is  indebted  for  the  preservation 
of  these  bones,  which  w-ere  not  at  first  regarded  as  human, 
and  into  whose  possession  they  afterwards  came,  brought 
the  cranium  from  Elberfeld  to  Bonn,  and  entrusted  it  to 
me  for  more  accurate  anatomical  examination.     At  the 
General  Meeting  of  the  Natural  History  Society  of  Prus- 
sian Rhineland  and  Westphalia,  at  Bonn,  on  the  2nd  of 
June,  1857,$  Dr.  Fuhlrott  himself  gave  a  full  account  of 
the  locality,  anrl  of  the  circumstances  under  which  the 
discovery  was  made.     He  was  of  opinion  that  the  bones 
might  be  regarded  as  fossil ;  and  in  coming  to  this  conclu- 
sion, he  laid  especial  stress  upon  the  existence  of  dendritic 
deposits,  with  which  their  surface  was  covered,  and  which 
were  first  noticed  upon  them  by  Professor  Mayer.    To  this 
communication  I  appended  a  brief  report  on  the  results 
of  my  anatomical  examination  of  the  bones.    The  conclu- 

♦  On  tlie  Crania  of  the  most  Ancient  Races  of  Man. — 
By  Professor  D.  Schaaflfhausen,  of  Bonn.  (From  Muller's 
Archiv.,  1858,  p.  453.)  With  Remarks,  and  original  Fig- 
ures, taken  from  a  Cast  of  the  Neanderthal  Cranium.  By 
George  Busk,  F.R.S.,  &c.  Natural  History  Review,  April, 
1861. 

t  Vcrhandl.  d.  Naturhist.  Tereins  der  preuss.  Rhein- 
lande  und  Westphalens.,  xiv. — Bonn,  1857. 

X  lb.  Correspondenzblatt.     No.  2, 


170  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

sions  at  which  I  arrived  were:  1st.  That  the  extraordinary 
form  of  the  skull  was  due  to  a  natural  conformation  hith- 
erto not  known  to  exist,  even  in  the  most  barbarous  races. 
2nd.  That  these  remarkable  human  remains  belonged  to 
a  period  antecedent  to  the  time  of  the  Celts  and  Germans, 
and  were  in  all  probability  derived  from  one  of  the  wild 
races  of  North-western  Europe,  spoken  of  by  Latin 
writers;  and  which  were  encountered  as  autochthones  by 
the  German  immigrants.  And  3rdly.  That  it  was  beyond 
doubt  that  these  human  relics  were  traceable  to  a  period 
at  which  the  latest  animals  of  the  diluvium  still  existed; 
but  that  no  proof  of  this  assumption,  nor  consequently  of 
their  so-termed  fossil  condition,  was  afforded  by  the  cir- 
cumstances under  which  the  bones  were  discovered. 

"  As  Dr.  Fuhlrott  has  not  yet  published  his  description 
of  these  circumstances,  I  borrow  the  following  account  of 
them  from  one  of  his  letters.  '  A  small  cave  or  grotto, 
high  enough  to  admit  a  man,  and  about  15  feet  deep  from 
the  entrance,  which  is  7  or  8  feet  wide,  exists  in  the  south- 
ern wall  of  the  gorge  of  the  Neanderthal,  as  it  is  termed, 
at  a  distance  of  about  100  feet  from  the  Diissel,  and  about 
60  feet  above  the  bottom  of  the  valley.  In  its  earlier  and 
uninjured  condition,  this  cavern  opened  upon  a  narrow 
plateau  lying  in  front  of  it,  and  from  which  the  rocky  wall 
descended  almost  perpendicularly  into  the  river.  It  could 
be  reached,  though  with  difficulty,  from  above.  The  un- 
even floor  was  covered  to  a  thickness  of  4  or  5  feet  with  » 
deposit  of  mud,  sparingly  intermixed  vidth  rounded  frag- 
ments of  chert.  In  the  remo\ing  of  this  deposit,  the  bones 
were  discovered.  The  skull  was  first  noticed,  placed  near- 
est to  the  entrance  of  the  cavern;  and  further  in,  the 
other  bones,  lying  in  the  same  horizontal  plane.  Of  this 
I  was  assured,  in  the  most  positive  terms,  by  two  la- 
bourers who  were  employed  to  clear  out  the  grotto,  and 
who  were  questioned  by  me  on  the  spot.  At  first  no  idea 
was  entertained  of  the  bones  being  human;  and  it  was 


Ill  THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  171 

not  till  several  weeks  after  their  discovery  that  they  were 
recognised  as  such  by  me,  and  placed  in  security. 

" '  But,  as  the  importance  of  the  discovery  was  not 
at  the  time  perceived,  the  labourers  were  very  careless  in 
the  collecting,  and  secured  chiefly  only  the  larger  bones; 
and  to  this  circumstance  it  may  be  attributed  that  frag- 
ments merely  of  the  probably  perfect  skeleton  came  into 
my  possession.' 

"  My  anatomical  examination  of  these  bones  afforded 
the  following  results:  — 

"  The  cranium  is  of  unusual  size,  and  of  a  long-ellipti- 
cal form.  A  most  remarkable  peculiarity  is  at  once  obvi- 
ous in  the  extraordinary  development  of  the  frontal  si- 
nuses, owing  to  which  the  superciliary  ridges,  which  coal- 
esce completely  in  the  middle,  are  rendered  so  prominent, 
that  the  frontal  bone  exhibits  a  considerable  hollow  or 
depression  above,  or  rather  behind  them,  whilst  a  deep  de- 
pression is  also  formed  in  the  situation  of  the  root  of  the 
nose.  The  forehead  is  narrow  and  low,  though  the  middle 
and  hinder  portions  of  the  cranial  arch  are  well  developed. 
Unfortunately,  the  fragment  of  the  skull  that  has  been 
preserved  consists  only  of  the  portion  situated  above  the 
roof  of  the  orbits  and  the  superior  occipital  ridges,  which 
are  greatly  developed,  and  almost  conjoined  so  as  to  form 
a  horizontal  eminence.  It  includes  almost  the  whole  of 
the  frontal  bone,  both  parietals,  a  small  part  of  the 
squamous  and  the  upper-third  of  the  occipital.  The  re- 
cently fractured  surfaces  show  that  the  skull  was  broken 
at  the  time  of  its  disinterment.  The  cavity  holds  16,876 
grains  of  water,  whence  its  cubical  contents  may  be  esti- 
mated at  57.64  inches,  or  1033.24  cubic  centimetres.  In 
making  this  estimation,  the  water  is  supposed  to  stand  on 
a  level  with  the  orbital  plate  of  the  frontal,  with  the  deep- 
est notch  in  the  squamous  margin  of  the  parietal,  and 
with  the  superior  semicircular  ridges  of  the  occipital. 
Estimated  in  dried  millet-seed,  the  contents  equalled  31 
ounces,  Prussian  Apothecaries'  weight.    The  semicircular 


172  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

line  indicating  the  upper  boundary  of  the  attachment  of 
the  temporal  muscle,  though  not  very  strongly  marked, 
ascends  nevertheless  to  more  than  half  the  height  of  the 
parietal  bone.  On  the  right  superciliary  ridge  is  observ- 
able an  oblique  furrow  or  depression,  indicative  of  an  in- 
jury received  during  life.*  The  coronal  and  sagittal  su- 
tures are  on  the  exterior  nearly  closed,  and  on  the  inside  bo 
completely  ossified  as  to  have  left  no  traces  whatever,  whilst 
the  lambdoidal  remains  quite  open.  The  depressions  for 
the  Pacchionian  glands  are  deep  and  numerous;  and  there 
is  an  unusually  deep  vascular  groove  immediately  behind 
the  coronal  suture,  which,  as  it  terminates  in  a  foramen, 
no  doubt  transmitted  a  vena  emissaria.  The  course  of 
the  frontal  suture  is  indicated  externally  by  a  slight 
ridge;  and  where  it  joins  the  coronal,  this  ridge  rises  into 
a  small  protuberance.  The  course  of  the  sagittal  suture 
is  grooved,  and  above  the  angle  of  the  occipital  bone  the 
parietals  are  depressed. 

mm.t  inches. 

The  length  of  the  skull  from  the 
nasal  process  of  the  frontal  over 
the  vertex  to  the  superior  semi- 
circular lines  of  the  occipital 
measures 303  (300)  =  12.0'. 

Circumference  over  the  orbital 
ridges  and  the  superior  semicir- 
cular lines  of  the  occipital  ...  590  (590)  =  23.37'  or  23'. 

Width  of  the  frontal  from  the  mid- 
dle of  the  temporal  line  on  one 
side  to  the  same  point  on  the  op- 
posite   104  (114)  =  4.1'- 4.5*. 


*  This,  Mr.  Busk  has  pointed  out,  is  probably  the 
notch  for  the  frontal  nerve. 

t  The  numbers  in  parentheses  are  those  which  I  should 
assign  to  the  different  measures,  as  taken  from  the  plaster 
cast. — G.  B. 


tn  THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  173 

mm.  incbss. 

Length  of  the  frontal  from  the 
nasal  process  to  the  coronal  su- 
ture  133(125)=:5.35'-5'. 

Extreme  width  of  the  frontal  si- 
nuses     •     25(33)  =  1.0'-0.9'. 

Vertical  height  above  a  line  join- 
ing the  deepest  notches  in  the 
squamous  border  of  the  parietals    70  =  2.75'. 

Width  of  hinder  part  of  skull  from 
one  parietal  protuberance  to  the 
other 138(150)  =  5.4'-5.9'. 

Distance  from  the  upper  angle  of 
the  occipital  to  the  superior 
semicircular  lines 51  (60)  =  1.9'— 2.4  . 

Thickness  of  the  bone  at  the  parie- 
tal protuberance 8- 

at  the  angle  of  the  occipital      9. 

at  the  superior  semicircular 

line  of  the  occipital 10  =  0.3  . 

"  Besides  the  cranium,  the  following  bonea  have  been 

secured: — 

"  1.  Both  thigh-bones,  perfect.  These,  like  the  skull, 
and  all  the  other  bones,  are  characterized  by  their  unusual 
thickness,  and  the  great  development  of  all  the  elevations 
and  depressions  for  the  attachment  of  muscles.  In  the 
Anatomical  Museum  at  Bonn,  under  the  designation  of 
*  Giant's  bones,'  are  some  recent  thigh-bones,  with  which 
in  thickness  the  foregoing  pretty  nearly  correspond,  al- 
though they  are  ihorter. 

Giant's  bones.         Fossil  bones, 
mm.    inches.        mm.    inches. 

Length 542  =  21.4'  ...  438  =  17.4J. 

Diameter  of  head  of  femur    54  =  2.14'  ...  53  =    2.0'. 
Diameter  of  lower  articular  end, 
from    one  condyle    to    the 

other 89  =  3.5'  ...87  =  3.4*. 

Diameter  of  femur  in  the  middU  .  33  =  1.3'  ...  30  =  1.1'. 


174  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  ra 

"2,  A  perfect  right  humerus,  whose  size  shows  that 
it  belongs  to  the  thigh-bones. 

mm.         inches. 

Length 312     =  12.3'. 

Thickness  in  the  middle.    .       26     =  1.0". 
Diameter  of  head    ....       49     =  1.9". 

"  Also  a  perfect  right  radius  of  corresponding  dimen- 
sions and  the  upper-third  of  a  right  ulna  corresponding 
to  the  humerus  and  radius. 

"  3.  A  left  humerus,  of  which  the  upper-third  is  want- 
ing, and  which  is  so  much  slenderer  than  the  right  as  ap- 
parently to  belong  to  a  distinct  individual;  a  left  ulna, 
which,  though  complete,  is  pathologically  deformed,  the 
coronoid  process  being  so  much  enlarged  by  bony  growth, 
that  flexure  of  the  elbow  beyond  a  right  angle  must  have 
been  impossible;  the  anterior  fossa  of  the  humerus  for 
the  reception  of  the  coronoid  process  being  also  filled  up 
with  a  similar  bony  growth.  At  the  same  time,  the  ole- 
cranon is  curved  strongly  downwards.  As  the  bone  pre- 
sents no  sign  of  rachitic  degeneration,  it  may  be  sup- 
posed that  an  injury  sustained  during  life  was  the  cause 
of  the  anchylosis.  When  the  left  ulna  is  compared  with 
the  right  radius,  it  might  at  first  sight  be  concluded  that 
the  bones  respectively  belonged  to  different  individuals, 
the  ulna  being  more  than  half  an  inch  too  short  for  articu- 
lation with  a  corresponding  radius.  But  it  is  clear  that 
this  shortening,  as  well  as  the  attenuation  of  the  left  hu- 
merus, are  both  consequent  upon  the  pathological  condi- 
tion above  described. 

"  4.  A  left  ilium,  almost  perfect,  and  belonging  to  the 
femur;  a  fragment  of  the  right  scapula;  the  anterior  ex- 
tremity of  a  rib  of  the  right  side;  and  the  same  part  of 
a  rib  of  the  left  side;  the  hinder  part  of  a  rib  of  the  right 
side ;  and,  lastly,  two  hinder  portions  and  one  middle  por- 
tion of  ribs  which,  from  their  unusually  rounded  shape, 
and  abrupt  curvature,  more  resemble  the  ribs  of  a  car- 


m 


THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  175 


nivorous  animal  than  those  of  a  man.  Dr.  H.  v.  Meyer, 
however,  to  whose  judgment  I  defer,  will  not  venture  to 
declare  them  to  be  ribs  of  any  animal;  and  it  only  re- 
mains to  suppose  that  this  abnormal  condition  has  arisen 
from  an  unusually  powerful  development  of  the  thoracic 

muscles. 

"  The  bones  adhere  strongly  to  the  tongue,  although, 
as  proved  by  the  use  of  hydrochloric  acid,  the  greater  part 
of  the  cartilage  is  still  retained  in  them,  which  appears, 
however,  to  have  undergone  that  transformation  into 
gelatine  which  has  been  observed  by  v.  Bibra  in  fossil 
bones.  The  surface  of  all  the  bones  is  in  many  spots 
covered  with  minute  black  specks,  which,  more  especially 
under  a  lens,  are  seen  to  be  formed  of  very  delicate 
dendrites.  These  deposits,  which  were  first  observed  on 
the  bones  by  Dr.  Mayer,  are  most  distinct  on  the  inner 
surface  of  the  cranial  bones.  They  consist  of  a  ferrugi- 
nous compound,  and,  from  their  black  colour,  may  be  sup- 
posed to  contain  manganese.  Similar  dendritic  forma- 
tions also  occur,  not  unfrequently,  on  laminated  rocks, 
and  are  usually  found  in  minute  fissures  and  cracks.  At 
the  meeting  of  the  Lower  Rhine  Society  at  Bonn,  on  the 
1st  April,  1857,  Prof.  Mayer  stated  that  he  had  noticed 
in  the  museum  of  Poppelsdorf  similar  dendritic  crystal- 
lizations on  several  fossil  bones  of  animals,  and  particu- 
larly on  those  of  Urstts  spelccus,  but  still  more  abun- 
dantly and  beautifully  displayed  on  the  fossil  bones  and 
teeth  of  Equiis  adamlticus,  Elephas  primigenins,  &c., 
from  the  caves  of  Bolve  and  Sundwig.  Faint  indications 
of  similar  dendrites  were  visible  in  a  Roman  skull  from 
Siegburg;  whilst  other  ancient  skulls,  which  had  lain  for 
centuries  in  the  earth,  presented  no  trace  of  them.*  I 
am  indebted  to  H.  v.  Meyer  for  the  following  remarks  on 
this  subject:  — 

*  \erh.  des  Naturhist,    Vereins  in  Bonn,  xiv.  1857. 


176  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  ra 

" '  The  incipient  formation  of  dendritic  deposits,  which 
were  formerly  regarded  as  a  sign  of  a  truly  fossil  condi- 
tion, is  interesting.  It  has  even  been  supposed  that  in 
diluvial  deposits  the  presence  of  dendrites  might  be  re- 
garded as  affording  a  certain  mark  of  distinction  between 
bones  mixed  with  the  diluvium  at  a  somewhat  later  period 
and  the  true  diluvial  relics,  to  which  alone  it  was  supposed 
that  these  deposits  were  confined.  But  I  have  long  been 
convinced  that  neither  can  the  absence  of  dendrites  be 
regarded  as  indicative  of  recent  age,  nor  their  presence 
as  sufficient  to  establish  the  great  antiquity  of  the  objects 
upon  which  they  occur.  I  have  myself  noticed  upon 
paper,  which  could  scarcely  be  more  than  a  year  old,  den- 
dritic deposits,  which  could  not  be  distinguished  from 
those  on  fossil  bones.  Thus  I  possess  a  dog's  skull  from 
the  Roman  colony  of  the  neighbouring  Heddersheim, 
Castrum  Hadrianutn,  which  is  in  no  way  distinguishable 
from  the  fossil  bones  from  the  Frankish  caves;  it  presents 
the  same  colour,  and  adheres  to  the  tongue  just  as  they 
do;  so  that  this  character  also,  which,  at  a  former  meet- 
ing of  German  naturalists  at  Bonn,  gave  rise  to  amusing 
scenes  between  Buckland  and  Schmerling,  is  no  longer  of 
any  value.  In  disputed  cases,  therefore,  the  condition  of 
the  bone  can  scarcely  afford  the  means  for  determining 
with  certainty  whether  it  be  fossil,  that  is  to  say,  whether  it 
belong  to  geological  antiquity  or  to  the  historical  period.' 

"  As  we  cannot  now  look  upon  the  primitive  world  as 
representing  a  wholly  different  condition  of  things,  from 
which  no  transition  exists  to  the  organic  life  of  the  present 
time,  the  designation  of  fossil,  as  applied  to  a  bone,  has 
no  longer  the  sense  it  conveyed  in  the  time  of  Cuvier. 
Sufficient  grounds  exist  for  the  assumption  that  man  co- 
existed with  the  animals  found  in  the  diluvium;  and  many 
a  barbarous  race  may,  before  all  historical  time,  have  dis- 
appeared, together  with  the  animals  of  the  ancient  world, 
whilst  the  races  whose  organization  is  improved  have  con- 


in  THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  177 

tinued  the  genus.  The  bones  which  form  the  subject  of 
this  paper  present  characters  which,  although  not  decisive 
as  regards  a  geological  epoch,  are,  nevertheless,  such  as 
indicate  a  very  high  antiquity.  It  may  also  be  remarked 
that,  common  as  is  the  occurrence  of  diluvial  animal  bones 
in  the  muddy  deposits  of  caverns,  such  remains  have  not 
hitherto  been  met  with  in  the  caves  of  the  Neanderthal; 
and  that  the  bones,  which  were  covered  by  a  deposit  of 
mud  not  more  than  four  or  five  feet  thick,  and  without 
any  protective  covering  of  stalagmite,  have  retained  the 
greatest  part  of  their  organic  substance. 

"  These  circumstances  might  be  adduced  against  the 
probability  of  a  geological  antiquity.     Nor  should  we  be 
justified  in  regarding  the  cranial  conformation  as  perhaps 
representing  the  most  savage  primitive  type  of  the  human 
race,    since   crania   exist   among   living   savages,    which, 
though  not  exhibiting  such  a  remarkable  conformation  of 
the  forehead,  which  gives  the  skull  somewhat  the  aspect 
of  that  of  the  large  apes,  still  in  other  respects,  as  for  in- 
stance in  the  greater  depth  of  the  temporal  fossae,  the 
crest-like,  prominent  temporal  ridges,  and  a  generally  less 
capacious  cranial  cavity,  exhibit  an  equally  low  stage  of 
development.     There  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the 
deep  frontal  hollow  is  due  to  any  artificial  flattening,  such 
as  is  practised  in  various  modes  by  barbarous  nations  in 
the  Old  and  New  World.    The  skull  is  quite  symmetrical, 
and  shows  no  indication  of  counter-pressure  at  the  occi- 
put, whilst,  according  to  Morton,  in  the  Flat-heads  of  the 
Columbia,  the  frontal  and  parietal  bones  are  always  un- 
symmetrical.     Its  conformation  exhibits  the  sparing  de- 
velopment of  the  anterior  part  of  the  head   which   has 
been  so  often  observe<i  in  very  ancient  crania,  and  affords 
one  of  the  most  striking  proofs  of  the  influence  of  culture 
and  civilization  on  the  form  of  the  human  skull." 

In  a  subsequent  passage,  Dr.  Schaaffhausen  re- 
marks: 


178  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  in 

"  There  is  no  reason  whatever  for  regarding  the  un- 
usual development  of  the  frontal  sinuses  in  the  remark- 
able skull  from  the  Neanderthal  as  an  individual  or 
pathological  deformity;  it  is  unquestionably  a  typical 
race-character,  and  is  physiologically  connected  with  the 
uncommon  thickness  of  the  other  bones  of  the  skeleton, 
which  exceeds  by  about  one-half  the  usual  proportions. 
This  expansion  of  the  frontal  sinuses,  which  are  append- 
ages of  the  air-passages,  also  indicates  an  unusual  force 
and  power  of  endurance  in  the  movements  of  the  body, 
as  may  be  concluded  from  the  size  of  all  the  ridges  and 
processes  for  the  attachment  of  the  muscles  or  bones.  That 
this  conclusion  may  be  drawn  from  the  existence  of  large 
frontal  sinuses,  and  a  prominence  of  the  lower  frontal 
region,  is  confirmed  in  many  ways  by  other  observations. 
By  the  same  characters,  according  to  Pallas,  the  wild  horse 
is  distinguished  from  the  domesticated,  and,  according  to 
Cuvier,  the  fossil  cave-bear  from  every  recent  species  of 
bear,  whilst,  according  to  Roulin,  the  pig,  which  has  be- 
come wild  in  America,  and  regained  a  resemblance  to  the 
wild  boar,  is  thus  distinguished  from  the  same  animal  in 
the  domesticated  state,  as  is  the  chamois  from  the  goat; 
and,  lastly,  the  bull-dog,  which  is  characterised  by  its 
large  bones  and  strongly-developed  muscles  from  every 
other  kind  of  dog.  The  estimation  of  the  facial  angle,  the 
determination  of  which,  according  to  Professor  Owen,  is 
also  difficult  in  the  great  apes,  owing  to  the  very  promi- 
nent supra-orbital  ridges,  in  the  present  case  is  rendered 
still  more  difficult  from  the  absence  both  of  the  auditory 
opening  and  of  the  nasal  spine.  But  if  the  proper  hori- 
zontal position  of  the  skull  be  taken  from  the  remaining 
portions  of  the  orbital  plates,  and  the  ascending  line  made 
to  touch  the  surface  of  the  frontal  bone  behind  the  promi- 
nent supra-orbital  ridges,  the  facial  angle  is  not  found  to 
exceed   56°.*     Unfortunately,  no  portions  of  the   facial 

*  Estimatinjr  the  facial  angle  in  the  wav  suggested,  on 
the  cast  I  should  place  it  at  64°  to  67°.— G.  B. 


Ill  THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  179 

hones,  whose  conformation  is  so  decisive  as  regards  the 
form  and  expression  of  the  head,  have  been  preserved. 
The  cranial  capacity,  compared  with  the  uncommon 
strength  of  the  corporeal  frame,  would  seem  to  indicate 
a  small  cerebral  development.  The  skull,  as  it  is,  holds 
about  31  ounces  of  millet-seed;  and  as,  from  the  propor- 
tionate size  of  the  wanting  bones,  the  whole  cranial  cav- 
ity should  have  about  6  ounces  more  added,  the  contents, 
were  it  perfect,  may  be  taken  at  37  ounces.  Tiederaann 
assigns,  as  the  cranial  contents  in  the  Negro,  40,  38,  and 
35  ounces.  The  cranium  holds  rather  more  than  36  ounces 
of  water  which  corresponds  to  a  capacity  of  1033.2-4  cubic 
centimetres.  Huschke  estimates  the  cranial  contents  of 
a  Negress  at  1127  cubic  centimetres;  of  an  old  Negro  at 
1140  cubic  centimetres.  The  capacity  of  the  Malay  skulls, 
estimated  by  water,  equalled  36,  33  ounces,  whilst  in  the 
diminutive  Hindoos  it  falls  to  as  little  as  27  ounces." 

After  comparing  the  Neanderthal  cranium  with 
many  others,  ancient  and  modern,  Professor 
Schaaffhausen  concludes  thus: — 

"  But  the  human  bones  and  cranium  from  the  Neander- 
thal exceed  all  the  rest  in  those  peculiarities  of  conforma- 
tion which  lead  to  the  conclusion  of  their  belonging  to  a 
barbarous  and  savage  race.  Whether  the  cavern  in  which 
they  were  found,  unaccompanied  with  any  trace  of  human 
art,  were  the  place  of  their  interment,  or  whether,  like  the 
bones  of  extinct  animals  elsewhere,  they  had  been  washed 
into  it,  they  may  still  be  regarded  as  the  most  ancient 
memorial  of  the  early  inhabitants  of  Europe." 

Mr.  Busk,  the  translator  of  Dr.  Schaaffhausen's 
paper,  has  enabled  us  to  form  a  very  vivid  con- 
ception of  the  degraded  character  of  the  Nean- 
derthal skull,  by  placing  side  by  side  with  its  out- 


180  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

line,  that  of  the  skull  of  a  Chimpanzee,  drawn  to 
the  same  absolute  size. 

Some  time  after  the  pubUcation  of  the  trans- 
lation of  Professor  Schaatfhausen's  Memoir,  I  was 
led  to  study  the  cast  of  the  Neanderthal  cranium 
with  more  attention  than  I  had  pre^aously  be- 
stowed upon  it,  in  consequence  of  wishing  to  sup- 
ply Sir  Charles  Lyell  with  a  diagram,  exhibiting 
the  special  pecuharities  of  this  skull,  as  compared 
with  other  human  skulls.  In  order  to  do  this  it 
was  necessary  to  identify,  with  precision,  those 
points  in  the  skulls  compared  which  corresponded 
anatomically.  Of  these  points,  the  glabella  was 
obvious  enough;  but  when  I  had  distinguished  an- 
other, defined  by  the  occipital  protuberance  and 
superior  semicircular  line,  and  had  placed  the  out- 
line of  the  Neanderthal  skull  against  that  of  the 
Engis  skull,  in  such  a  position  that  the  glabella 
and  occipit-al  protuberance  of  both  were  intersected 
by  the  same  straight  line,  the  difference  was  so 
vast  and  the  flattening  of  the  Neanderthal  skull 
so  prodigious  (compare  Figs.  23  and  25  A),  that  I 
at  first  imagined  I  must  have  fallen  into  some 
error.  And  I  was  the  more  incHned  to  suspect 
this.  as.  in  ordinary  human  skulls,  the  occipital 
protuberance  and  superior  semicircular  curved 
line  on  the  exterior  of  the  occiput  correspond 
pretty  closely  u-ith  the  "  lateral  sinuses  "  and  the 
line  of  attachment  of  the  tentorium  internally. 
But  on  the  tentorium  rests,  as  I  have  said  in  the 


m  THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  181 

preceding  Essay,  the  posterior  lobe  of  the  brain; 
and  hence,  the  occipital  protuberance,  and  the 
curved  line  in  question,  indicate,  approximately, 
the  lower  limits  of  that  lobe.  Was  it  possible  for 
a  human  being  to  have  the  brain  thus  flattened 
and  depressed;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  had  the 
muscular  ridges  shifted  their  position?  In  order 
to  solve  these  doubts,  and  to  decide  the  question 
whether  the  great  supraciliary  projections  did,  or 
did  not,  arise  from  the  development  of  the  frontal 
sinuses,  I  requested  Sir  Charles  Lyell  to  be  so  good 
as  to  obtain  for  me  from  Dr.  Fuhlrott,  the  pos- 
sessor of  the  skull,  answers  to  certain  queries,  and 
if  possible  a  cast,  or  at  any  rate  drawings,  or  photo- 
graphs, of  the  interior  of  the  skull. 

Dr.  Fuhlrott  replied,  with  a  courtesy  and  readi- 
ness for  which  I  am  infinitely  indebted  to  him,  to 
my  inquiries,  and  furthermore  sent  three  excellent 
photographs.     One  of  these  gives  a  side  view  of  the 
skull,  and  from  it  Fig.  25  A  has  been  shaded.    The 
second  (Fig.  26  A)  exhibits  the  wide  openings  of 
the  frontal  sinuses  upon  the  inferior  surface  of 
the  frontal  part  of  the  skull,  into  which,  Dr.  Fuhl- 
rott writes,  "  a  probe  may  be  introduced  to  the 
depth  of  an  inch,"  and  demonstrates  the  great 
extension  of  the  thickened  supraciliary  ridges  be- 
yond the  cerebral  cavity.    The  third,  lastly  (Fig. 
26  B),  exhibits  the  edge  and  the  interior  of  the 
posterior,  or  occipital,  part  of  the  skull,  and  shows 
very  clearly  the  two  depressions  for  the  lateral  si- 


182 


HUMAN  FOSSILS. 


<n 


Fig.  25.- — The  skull  from  the  Neanderthal  cavern.  A, 
The  outlines  from  camera  lucida  drawino^s,  one  half  the 
from  Dr.  Fuhlrott's  photographs,     a  glabella;  b  occipital 

nuses,  sweeping  inwards  towards  the  middle  line  of 
the  roof  of  the  skull,  to  form  the  longitudinal  sinus. 
It  was  clear,  therefore,  that  I  had  not  erred  in 


m 


THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN. 


183 


my  interpretation,  and  that  the  posterior  lobe  of 
the  brain  of  the  Neanderthal  man  must  have  been 
as  much  flattened  as  I  suspected  it  to  be. 

In  truth,  the  Neanderthal  cranium  has  most 
extraordinary    characters.      It    has    an    extreme 


side,  B,  front,  and  C,  top  view.  One  half  the  natural  size, 
natural  size,  by  Mr.  Busk:  the  details  from  the  cast  and 
protuberance;  d  lambdoidal  suture. 

length  of  8  inches,  while  its  breadth  is  only  5.75 
inches,  or,  in  other  words,  its  length  is  to  its 
breadth  as  100  :  72.     It  is  exceedingly  depressed. 


184 


HUMAN  FOSSILS. 


m 


measuring  only  about  3.4  inches  from  the  glahello- 
occipital  line  to  the  vertex.    The  longitudinal  arc. 


Fig.  26. — Drawings  from  Dr.  Fuhlrott's  photographs 
of  parts  of  the  interior  of  the  Neanderthal  cranium.  A 
view  of  the  under  and  inner  surface  of  the  frontal  region, 
showing  the  inferior  apertures  of  the  frontal  sinuses  (a). 
B  corresponding  view  of  the  occipital  region  of  the  skull, 
showing  the  impressions  of  the  lateral  sinuses  {aa). 

measured  in  the  same  way  as  in  the  Engis  skull, 
is  13  inches;  the  transverse  arc  cannot  be  exactly 


ra  THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  185 

ascertained,  in  consequence  of  the  absence  of  the 
temporal  bones,  but  was  probably  about  the  same, 
and  certainly  exceeded  10:^  inches.  The  horizontal 
circumference  is  23  inches.  But  this  great  circum- 
ference arises  largely  from  the  vast  development 
of  the  supraciliary  ridges,  though  the  perimeter 
of  the  brain  case  itself  is  not  small.  The  large 
supraciliary  ridges  give  the  forehead  a  far  more 
retreating  appearance  than  its  internal  contour 
would  bear  out. 

To  an  anatomical  eye,  the  posterior  part  of  the 
skull  is  even  more  striking  than  the  anterior.  The 
occipital  protuberance  occupies  the  extreme  pos- 
terior end  of  the  skull,  when  the  glabello-occipital 
line  is  made  horizontal,  and  so  far  from  any  part 
of  the  occipital  region  extending  beyond  it,  this 
region  of  the  skull  slopes  obliquely  upward  and 
forward,  so  that  the  lambdoidal  suture  is  situated 
well  upon  the  upper  surface  of  the  cranium.  At 
the  same  time,  notwithstanding  the  great  length 
of  the  skull,  the  sagittal  suture  is  remarkably  short 
(4r|  inches),  and  the  squamosal  suture  is  very 
straight. 

In  reply  to  my  questions  Dr.  Fuhlrott  writes 
that  the  occipital  bone  "  is  in  a  state  of  perfect 
preservation  as  far  as  the  upper  semicircular  line, 
which  is  a  very  strong  ridge,  linear  at  its  extremi- 
ties, but  enlarging  towards  the  middle,  where  it 
forms  two  ridges  (bourrelets),  united  by  a  linear 
continuation,  which  is  slightly  depressed  in  the 
middle." 


186  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

"  Below  the  left  ridge  the  bone  exhibits  an  ob- 
liquely inclined  surface,  six  lines  (French)  long, 
and  twelve  lines  wide." 

This  last  must  be  the  surface,  the  contour  of 
which  is  shown  in  Fig.  25  A,  below  h.  It  is  par- 
ticularly interesting,  as  it  suggests  that,  notwith- 
standing the  flattened  condition  of  the  occiput, 
the  posterior  cerebral  lobes  must  have  projected 
considerably  beyond  the  cerebellum,  and  as  it 
constitutes  one  among  several  points  of  similarity 
between  the  Neanderthal  cranium  and  certain 
Australian  skulls. 

Such  are  the  two  best  known  forms  of  human 
cranium,  which  have  been  found  in  what  may  be 
fairly  termed  a  fossil  state.  Can  either  be  shown 
to  fill  up  or  diminish,  to  any  appreciable  extent, 
the  structural  interval  which  exists  between  Man 
and  the  man-like  apes?  Or,  on  the  other  hand, 
does  neither  depart  more  widely  from  the  average 
structure  of  the  human  cranium,  than  normally 
formed  skulls  of  men  are  known  to  do  at  the 
present  day? 

It  is  impossible  to  form  any  opinion  on  these 
questions,  without  some  preliminary  acquaintance 
with  the  range  of  variation  exhibited  by  human 
structure  in  general — a  subject  which  has  been  but 
imperfectly  studied,  while  even  of  what  is  known, 
my  limits  will  necessarily  allow  me  to  give  only  a 
very  imperfect  sketch. 


in  THE  NEANDERTHAL  MAN.  187 

The  student  of  anatomy  is  perfectly  well  aware 
that  there  is  not  a  single  organ  of  the  human  body 
the  structure  of  which  does  not  vary,  to  a  greater 
or  less  extent,  in  different  individuals.  The  skele- 
ton varies  in  the  proportions,  and  even  to  a  certain 
extent  in  the  connections,  of  its  constituent  bones. 
The  muscles  which  move  the  bones  vary  largely 
in  their  attachments.  The  varieties  in  the  mode 
of  distribution  of  the  arteries  are  carefully  classi- 
fied, on  account  of  the  practical  importance  of  a 
knowledge  of  their  shiftings  to  the  surgeon.  The 
characters  of  the  brain  vary  immensely,  nothing 
being  less  constant  than  the  form  and  size  of  the 
cerebral  hemispheres,  and  the  richness  of  the  con- 
volutions upon  their  surface,  while  the  most 
changeable  structures  of  all  in  the  human  brain  are 
exactly  those  on  which  the  unwise  attempt  has 
been  made  to  base  the  distinctive  characters  of 
humanity,  viz.  the  posterior  cornu  of  the  lateral 
ventricle,  the  hippocampus  minor,  and  the  degree 
of  projection  of  the  posterior  lobe  beyond  the  cere- 
bellum. Finally,  as  all  the  world  knows,  the  hair 
and  skin  of  human  beings  may  present  the  most 
extraordinary  diversities  in  colour  and  in  texture. 

So  far  as  our  present  knowledge  goes,  the  ma- 
jority of  the  structural  varieties  to  which  allusion 
is  here  made,  are  individual.  The  ape-like  ar- 
rangement of  certain  muscles  which  is  occasion- 
ally met  with  *  in  the  white  races  of  mankind,  is 

*  See  an  excellent  Essay  by  Jlr.  Church  on  the  Myology 
of  the  Orang,  in  the  Natural  History  Review  for  1861. 


Fig.  27. — Side  and  front  views  of  the  round  and  or- 
thognathous  skull  of  a  Calmuck  after  Von  Baer.  Oae- 
third  the  natural  elze. 


m  VARIATIONS:  HUMAN  SKULL,  189 

not  known  to  be  more  common  among  Negroes 
or  Australians:  nor  because  the  brain  of  the 
Hottentot  Venus  was  found  to  be  smoother,  to 
have  its  convolutions  more  symmetrically  disposed, 
and  to  be,  so  far,  more  ape-like  than  that  of  ordi- 
nary Europeans,  are  we  justified  in  concluding  a 
like  condition  of  the  brain  to  prevail  universally 
among  the  lower  races  of  mankind,  however  prob- 
able that  conclusion  may  be. 

We  are,  in  fact,  sadly  wanting  in  information 
respecting  the  disposition  of  the  soft  and  de- 
structible organs  of  every  Race  of  Mankind  but 
our  own;  and  even  of  the  skeleton,  our  Museums 
are  lamentably  deficient  in  every  part  but  the 
cranium.  Skulls  enough  there  are,  and  since  the 
time  when  Blumenbach  and  Camper  first  called 
attention  to  the  marked  and  singular  differences 
which  they  exhibit,  skull  collecting  and  skull  meas- 
uring has  been  a  zealously  pursued  branch  of 
Natural  History,  and  the  results  obtained  have 
been  arranged  and  classified  by  various  writers, 
among  whom  the  late  active  and  able  Eetzius  must 
always  be  the  first  named. 

Human  skulls  have  been  found  to  differ  from 
one  another,  not  merely  in  their  absolute  size  and 
in  the  absolute  capacity  of  the  brain  case,  but  in 
the  proportions  which  the  diameters  of  the  latter 
bear  to  one  another;  in  the  relative  size  of  the 
bones  of  the  face  (and  more  particularly  of  the 
jaws  and  teeth)  as  compared  with  those  of  the 


190  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

skull;  in  the  degree  to  which  the  upper  jaw  (which 
is  of  course  followed  by  the  lower)  is  thrown  back- 
wards and  downwards  under  the  fore  part  of  the 
brain  case,  or  forwards  and  upwards  in  front  of 
and  beyond  it.  They  differ  further  in  the  relations 
of  the  transverse  diameter  of  the  face,  taken 
through  the  cheek  bones,  to  the  transverse  diam- 
eter of  the  skull;  in  the  more  rounded  or  more 
gable-like  form  of  the  roof  of  the  skull,  and  in  the 
degree  to  which  the  hinder  part  of  the  skull  is 
flattened  or  projects  beyond  the  ridge,  into  and 
below  which  the  muscles  of  the  neck  are  inserted. 
In  some  skulls  the  brain  case  may  be  said  to  be 
"  round,"  the  extreme  length  not  exceeding  the 
extreme  breadth  by  a  greater  proportion  than  100 
to  80,  while  the  difference  may  be  much  less.* 
Men  possessing  such  skulls  were  termed  by 
Eetzius  "  hr  achy  cephalic,"  and  the  skull  of  a 
Calmuck,  of  which  a  front  and  side  view  (reduced 
outline  copies  of  which  are  given  in  Fig.  27)  are 
depicted  by  Von  Baer  in  his  excellent  "  Crania 
selecta,"  affords  a  very  admirable  sample  of  that 
kind  of  skull.  Other  skulls,  such  as  that  of  a 
Negro  copied  in  Fig.  28  from  Mr.  Busk's  "  Crania 
typica,"  have  a  very  different,  greatly  elongated 
form,  and  may  be  termed  "  oblong."  In  this  skull 
the  extreme  length  is  to  the  extreme  breadth  as 
100  to  not  more  than  67,  and  the  transverse  di- 
ameter of  the  human  skull  may  fall  below  even 

•  In  no  normal  human  skull  does  the  breadth  of  the 
brain  case  exceed  its  length. 


YiG   28— Oblong  and  prognathous  skull  of  a  Negro; 
side  and  front  views.    One-third  of  the  natural  size. 


192  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

this  proportion.     People  having  such  skulls  were 
called  by  Eetzius  "  dolichocephalic." 

The  most  cursory  glance  at  the  side  views  of 
these  two  skulls  will  suffice  to  prove  that  they 
differ,  in  another  respect,  to  a  very  striking  ex- 
tent. The  profile  of  the  face  of  the  Calmuck  is 
almost  vertical,  the  facial  bones  being  thrown 
downwards  and  under  the  fore  part  of  the  skull. 
The  profile  of  the  face  of  the  Negro,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  singularly  inclined,  the  front  part  of  the 
jaws  projecting  far  forward  beyond  the  level  of  the 
fore  part  of  the  skull.  In  the  former  case  the  skull 
is  said  to  be  "  orthognathous  "  or  straight-jawed;  in 
the  latter,  it  is  called  "  prognathous,"  a  term  which 
has  been  rendered,  with  more  force  than  elegance, 
by  the  Saion  equivalent, — "  snouty." 

Various  methods  have  been  devised  in  order  to 
express  with  some  accuracy  the  degree  of  prog- 
nathism or  orthognathism  of  any  given  skull;  most 
of  these  methods  being  essentially  modifications 
of  that  devised  by  Peter  Camper,  in  order  to  attain 
what  he  called  the  "  facial  angle." 

But  a  little  consideration  will  show  that  any 
"  facial  angle  "  that  has  been  devised,  can  be  com- 
petent to  express  the  structural  modifications  in- 
volved in  prognathism  and  orthognathism,  only  in 
a  rough  and  general  sort  of  way.  For  the  lines, 
the  intersection  of  which  forms  the  facial  angle, 
are  drawn  through  points  of  the  skull,  the  position 
of  each  of  which  is  modified  by  a  number  of  cir- 


m  VARIATIONS:  HUMAN  SKULL.  193 

cumstances,  so  that  the  angle  obtained  is  a  complex 
resultant  of  all  these  circumstances,  and  is  not  the 
expression  of  any  one  definite  organic  relation  of 
the  parts  of  the  skull. 

I  have  arrived  at  the  conviction  that  no  com- 
parison of  crania  is  worth  very  much  that  is  not 
founded  upon  the  establishment  of  a  relatively 
fixed  base  line,  to  which  the  measurements,  in  all 
cases,  must  be  referred.  Nor  do  I  think  it  is  a 
very  difficult  matter  to  decide  what  that  base  line 
should  be.  The  parts  of  the  skull,  like  those  of 
the  rest  of  the  animal  framework,  are  developed 
in  succession:  the  base  of  the  skull  is  formed  be- 
fore its  sides  and  roof;  it  is  converted  into  cartilage 
earlier  and  more  completely  than  the  sides  and 
roof:  and  the  cartilaginous  base  ossifies,  and  be- 
comes soldered  into  one  piece  long  before  the  roof. 
I  conceive  then  that  the  base  of  the  skull  may  be 
demonstrated  developmentally  to  be  its  relatively 
fixed  part,  the  roof  and  sides  being  relatively 
movable. 

The  same  truth  is  exemplified  by  the  study  of 
the  modifications  which  the  skull  undergoes  in 
ascending  from  the  lower  animals  up  to  man. 

In  such  a  mammal  as  a  Beaver  (Fig.  29),  a  line 
(a  h)  drawn  through  the  bones,  termed  basiocci- 
pital,  basisphenoid,  and  presphenoid,  is  very  long 
in  proportion  to  the  extreme  length  of  the  cavity 
which  contains  the  cerebral  hemispheres  (g  h). 
The  plane  of  the  occipital  foramen  {b  c)  forms  a 
177 


Beflver. 


Ltianr. 


Fig.  29. — Longitudinal  and  vertical  sections  of  the 
skulls  of  a  Beaver  {Castor  Canadensis),  a  Lemur  (L. 
Catta),  and  a  Baboon  {Ci/nocephahis  Papio),  ah,  the 
basicranial  axis;  h  c,  the  occipital  plane;  i  T,  the  tentorial 
plane;  ad.  the  olfactory  plane;  f  e,  the  basifacial  axis; 
cba,  occipital  angle;  ft  a,  tentorial  angle;  dab,  olfac- 
tory angle;  e  f  h,  craniofacial  angle;  g  li,  extreme  length 
of  the  cavity  which  lodges  the  cerebral  hemispheres  or 
"  cerebral  length."  The  length  of  the  basicranial  axis  as 
to  this  length,  or,  in  other  words,  the  proportional  length 


m  MAMMALIAN  SKULLS.  195 

of  the  line  g  Jt  to  that  of  a  ft  taken  as  100,  in  the  three 
skulls,  is  as  follows: — Beaver,  70  to  100;  Lemur,  119  to 
100;  Baboon,  144  to  100.  In  an  adult  male  Gorilla  the 
cerebral  length  is  as  170  to  the  basicranial  axis  taken 
as  100,  in  the  Negro  (Fig.  30)  as  236  to  100.  In  the 
Constantinople  skull  (Fig.  30)  it  is  as  206  to  100.  The 
difference  between  the  highest  Ape's  skull  and  the  lowest 
Man's  is  therefore  very  strikingly  brought  out  by  these 
measurements. 

In  the  diagram  of  the  Baboon's  skull  the  dotted  lines 
d^  d^,  &c.,  give  the  angles  of  the  Lemur's  and  Beaver's  skull, 
as  laid  down  upon  the  basicranial  axis  of  the  Baboon.  The 
line  a  b  has  the  same  length  in  each  diagram. 

slightly  acute  angle  with  this  "  basicranial  axis," 
while  the  plane  of  the  tentorium  (i  T)  is  inclined 
at  rather  more  than  90°  to  the  "  basicranial  axis  "; 
and  so  is  the  plane  of  the  perforated  plate  (a  d), 
by  which  the  filaments  of  the  olfactory  nerve 
leave  the  skull.  Again,  a  line  drawn  through  the 
axis  of  the  face,  between  the  bones  called  ethmoid 
and  vomer — the  "  basifacial  axis  "  {f.  e.)  forms  an 
exceedingly  obtuse  angle,  where,  when  produced, 
it  cuts  the  "  basicranial  axis." 

If  the  angle  made  by  the  line  l  c  with  a  h,  be 
called  the  "  occipital  angle,"  and  the  angle  made 
by  the  line  a  d  with  a  &  be  termed  the  "  olfactory 
angle  "  and  that  made  by  i  T  with  a  1)  the  "  ten- 
torial angle"  then  all  tliese,  in  the  mammal  in 
question,  are  nearly  right  angles,  varying  between 
80°  and  110°.  The  angle  efb,OT  that  made  by  the 
cranial  with  the  facial  axis,  and  which  may  be 
termed  the  "  craniofacial  angle,"  is  extremely  ob- 
tuse, amounting,  in  the  case  of  the  Beaver,  to  at 
least  150°. 


196  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  ra 

But  if  a  eeries  of  sections  of  mammalian  skulls, 
intermediate  between  a  Kodent  and  a  Man  (Fig. 
29),  be  examined,  it  will  be  found  that  in  the 
higher  crania  the  basicranial  axis  becomes  shorter 
relatively  to  the  cerebral  length;  that  the  "  olfac- 
tory angle  "  and  "  occipital  angle  "  become  more 
obtuse;  and  that   the   "  craniofacial  angle,"  be- 
comes more  acute  by  the  bending  down,  as  it  were, 
of  the  facial  axis  upon  the  cranial  axis.     At  the 
same  time,  the  roof  of  the  cranium  becomes  more 
and  more  arched,  to  allow  of  the  increasing  height 
of  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  which  is  eminently 
characteristic  of  man,  as  well  as  of  that  backward 
extension,  beyond  the  cerebellum,  which  reaches 
its  maximum  in  the  South  American  Monkeys. 
So  that,  at  last,  in  the  human  skull  (Fig.  30),  the 
cerebral  length  is  between  twice  and  thrice  as 
great  as  the  length  of  the  basicranial  axis;  the  ol- 
factory plane  is  20°  or  30°  on  the  under  side  of 
that  axis;  the  occipital  angle,  instead  of  being  less 
than  90°,  ie,  as  much  as  150°  or  160°;  the  cranio- 
facial angle  may  be  90°  or  less,  and  the  vertical 
height  of  the  skull  may  have  a  large  proportion  to 
its  length. 

It  will  be  obvious,  from  an  inspection  of  the 
diagrams,  that  the  basicranial  axis  is,  in  the 
ascending  series  of  Mammalia,  a  relatively  fixed 
line,  on  which  the  bones  of  the  sides  and  roof  of  the 
cranial  cavity,  and  of  the  face,  may  be  said  to  re- 
volve downwards  and  forwards  or  backwards,  acv 


Fig  30.— Sections  of  orthognathous  (lig^t  contour) 
and  prognathous  (dark  contour)  skulls,  one-t hird  of  the 
natural  SS.  a  b,  Basicranial  axis;  b  c,  b'  C,  plane  of  the 
^Tp^l  fSamen;  dd',  hinder  end  of  the  palatine  bone; 
^^l^Jr^nt  end  of  the  upper  jaw;  TT',  insertion  of  the 
tentohuixL. 


198  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

cording  to  their  position.  The  arc  described  by 
any  one  bone  or  plane,  however,  is  not  by  any 
means  always  in  proportion  to  the  arc  described  by 
another. 

Now  conies  the  important  question,  can  we  dis- 
cern, between  the  lowest  and  the  highest  forms  of 
the  human  cranium  anything  answering,  in  how- 
ever slight  a  degree,  to  this  revolution  of  the  side 
and  roof  bones  of  the  skull  upon  the  basicranial 
axis  observed  upon  so  great  a  scale  in  the  mam- 
malian series?  Numerous  observations  lead  me  to 
believe  that  we  must  answer  this  question  in  the 
affirmative. 

The  diagrams  in  Fig.  30  are  reduced  from 
very  carefully  made  diagrams  of  sections  of  four 
skulls,  two  round  and  orthognathous,  two  long  and 
prognathous,  taken  longitudinally  and  vertically, 
through  the  middle.  The  sectional  diagrams  have 
then  been  superimposed,  in  such  a  manner,  that 
the  basal  axes  of  the  skulls  coincide  by  their  an- 
terior ends,  and  in  their  direction.  The  deviations 
of  the  rest  of  the  contours  (which  represent  the  in- 
terior of  the  skulls  only)  show  the  differences  of 
the  skulls  from  one  another,  when  these  axes  are 
regarded  as  relatively  fixed  lines. 

The  dark  contours  are  those  of  an  Australian 
and  of  a  Negro  skull:  the  light  contours  are 
those  of  a  Tartar  skull,  in  the  Museum  of  the 
Eoyal  College  of  Surgeons;  and  of  a  well  de- 
veloped round   skull  from   a   cemetery   in   Con- 


m  VAEIATIONS:  HUMAN  SKULLS.  I99 

stantinople,  of  uncertain  race,  in  my  own  pos- 
session. 

It  appears,  at  once,  from  these  views,  that  the 
prognathous  skulls,  so  far  as  their  jaws  are  con- 
cerned, do  really  differ  from  the  orthognathous  in 
much  the  same  way  as,  though  to  a  far  less  degree 
than,  the  skulls  of  the  lower  mammals  differ  from 
those  of  Man.  Furthermore,  the  plane  of  the  oc- 
cipital foramen  (&  c)  forms  a  somewhat  smaller 
angle  with  the  axis  in  these  particular  prognathous 
skulls  than  in  the  orthognathous;  and  the  like  may 
be  slightly  true  of  the  perforated  plate  of  the  eth- 
moid— though  this  point  is  not  so  clear.  But  it  is 
singular  to  remark  that,  in  another  respect,  the 
prognathous  skulls  are  less  ape-like  than  the  or- 
thognathous, the  cerebral  cavity  projecting  decid- 
edly more  beyond  the  anterior  end  of  the  axis  in 
the  prognathous,  than  in  the  orthognathous,  skulls. 

It  will  be  observed  that  these  diagrams  reveal 
an  immense  range  of  variation  in  the  capacity  and 
relative  proportion  to  the  cranial  axis,  of  the  differ- 
ent regions  of  the  cavity  which  contains  the  brain, 
in  the  different  skulls.  Nor  is  the  difference  in  the 
extent  to  which  the  cerebral  overlaps  the  cere- 
bellar cavity  less  singular.  A  round  skull  (Fig.  30, 
Const.)  may  have  a  greater  posterior  cerebral  pro- 
jection than  a  long  one  (Fig.  30,  Negro). 

Until  human  crania  have  been  largely  worked 
out  in  a  manner  similar  to  that  here  suggested — 
until  it  shall  be  an  opprobrium  to  an  ethnological 


200  HUMAN   FOSSILS.  m 

collection  to  possess  a  single  skull  which  is  not  bi- 
sected longitudinally — until  the  angles  and  meas- 
urements here  mentioned,  together  with  a  number 
of  others  of  which  I  cannot  speak  in  this  place,  are 
determined,  and  tabulated  with  reference  to  the 
basicranial  axis  as  unity,  for  large  numbers  of  skulls 
of  the  different  races  of  Mankind,  I  do  not  think 
we  shall  have  any  very  safe  basis  for  that  ethno- 
logical craniology  which  aspires  to  give  the  ana- 
tomical characters  of  the  crania  of  the  different 
Eaces  of  Mankind. 

At  present,  I  believe  that  the  general  outlines 
of  what  may  be  safely  said  upon  that  subject  may 
be  summed  up  in  a  very  few  words.  Draw  a  line 
on  a  globe,  from  the  Gold  Coast  in  Western  Africa 
to  the  steppes  of  Tartary.  At  the  southern  and 
western  end  of  that  line  there  live  the  most  dolicho- 
cephalic, prognathous,  curly-haired,  dark-skinned 
of  men — the  true  Negroes.  At  the  northern  and 
eastern  end  of  the  same  line  there  live  the  most 
brachycephalic,  orthognathous,  straight  -  haired, 
yellow-skinned  of  men — the  Tartars  and  Cal- 
mucks.  The  two  ends  of  this  imaginary  line  are 
indeed,  so  to  speak,  ethnological  antipodes.  A 
line  drawn  at  right  angles,  or  nearly  so,  to  this 
polar  line  through  Europe  and  Southern  Asia  to 
Hindostan,  would  give  us  a  sort  of  equator,  around 
which  round-headed,  oval-headed,  and  oblong- 
headed,  prognathous  and  orthognathous,  fair  and 
dark  races — but  none  possessing  the  excessively 


m  AUSTRALIAN  SKULLS.  201 

marked  characters  of  Calmuck  or  Negro — group 
themselves. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  the  regions  of  the 
antipodal  races  are  antipodal  in  climate,  the 
greatest  contrast  the  world  affords,  perhaps,  being 
that  between  the  damp,  hot,  steaming,  alluvial 
coast  plains  of  the  West  Coast  of  Africa  and  the 
arid,  elevated  steppes  and  plateaux  of  Central  Asia, 
bitterly  cold  in  winter,  and  as  far  from  the  sea  as 
any  part  of  the  world  can  be. 

From  Central  Asia  eastward  to  the  Pacific 
Islands  and  subcontinents  on  the  one  hand,  and  to 
America  on  the  other,  brachycephaly  and  orthog- 
nathism gradually  diminish,  and  are  replaced  by 
dolichocephaly  and  prognathism,  less,  however,  on 
the  American  Continent  (throughout  the  whole 
length  of  which  a  rounded  type  of  skull  prevails 
largely,  but  not  exclusively)  *  than,  in  the  Pacific 
region,  where,  at  length,  on  the  Australian  Con- 
tinent and  in  the  adjacent  islands,  the  oblong 
skull,  the  projecting  jaws,  and  the  dark  skin  re- 
appear; with  so  much  departure,  in  other  respects, 
from  the  Negro  type,  that  ethnologists  assign  to 
these  people  the  special  title  of  "  Negritoes." 

The  Australian  skull  is  remarkable  for  its 
narrowness  and  for  the  thickness  of  its  walls, 
especially  in  the  region  of  the  supraciliary  ridge, 

*  See  Dr.  D.  Wilson's  valuable  paper  "  On  the  sup- 
posed prevalence  of  one  Cranial  Type  throughout  the 
American  Aborigines." — Canadian  Journal,  Vol.  II.  1857. 


202  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  in 

which  is  frequently,  though  not  by  any  means 
invariably,  solid  throughout,  the  frontal  sinuses  re- 
maining undeveloped.  The  nasal  depression, 
again,  is  extremely  sudden,  so  that  the  brows  over- 
hang and  give  the  countenance  a  particularly 
lowering,  threatening  expression.  The  occipital 
region  of  the  skull,  also,  not  unfrequently  becomes 
less  prominent;  so  that  it  not  only  fails  to  project 
beyond  a  line  drawn  perpendicular  to  the  hinder 
extremity  of  the  glabello-occipital  line,  but  even, 
in  some  cases,  begins  to  shelve  away  from  it,  for- 
wards, almost  immediately.  In  consequence  of 
this  circumstance,  the  parts  of  the  occipital  bone 
which  lie  above  and  below  the  tuberosity  make  a 
much  more  acute  angle  with  one  another  than  is 
usual,  whereby  the  hinder  part  of  the  base  of  the 
skull  appears  obliquely  truncated.  Many  Aus- 
tralian skulls  have  a  considerable  height,  quite 
equal  to  that  of  the  average  of  any  other  race,  but 
there  are  others  in  which  the  cranial  roof  becomes 
remarkably  depressed,  the  skull,  at  the  same  time, 
elongating  so  much  that,  probably,  its  capacity  is 
not  diminished.  The  majority  of  skulls  possessing 
these  characters,  which  I  have  seen,  are  from  the 
neighbourhood  of  Port  Adelaide  in  South  Aus- 
tralia, and  have  been  used  by  the  natives  as  water 
vessels;  to  which  end  the  face  has  been  knocked 
away,  and  a  string  passed  through  the  vacuity  and 
the  occipital  foramen,  so  that  the  skull  was  sus- 
pended by  the  greater  part  of  its  basis. 


in 


THE  FOSSIL  SKULLS. 


203 


Fig.  31  represents  the  contour  of  a  skull  of 
this  kind  from  Western  Port,  with  the  jaw 
attached,  and  of  the  Neanderthal  skull,  both 
reduced  to  one-third  of  the  size  of  nature.    A  small 


Fig.  31. — An  Australian  skull  from  Western  Port,  in 
the  Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  with  the 
contour  of  the  Neanderthal  skull.  Both  reduced  to  one- 
third  the  natural  size. 

additional  amount  of  flattening  and  lengthening, 
with  a  corresponding  increase  of  the  supraciliary 
ridge,  would  convert  the  Australian  brain  case  into 
a  form  identical  with  that  of  the  aberrant  fossil. 


And  now,  to  return  to  the  fossil  skulls,  and  to 
the  rank  which  they  occupy  among,  or  beyond. 


204  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

these  existing  varieties  of  cranial  conformation. 
In  the  first  place,  I  must  remark,  that,  as  Professor 
Schmerling  well  observed  (supra,  p.  161)  in  com- 
menting upon  the  Engis  skull,  the  formation  of  a 
safe  judgment  upon  the  question  is  greatly  hin- 
dered by  the  absence  of  the  jaws  from  both  the 
crania,  so  that  there  is  no  means  of  deciding,  with 
certainty,  whether  they  were  more  or  less  prog- 
nathous than  the  lower  existing  races  of  mankind. 
And  yet,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  more  in  this  respect 
than  any  other,  that  human  skulls  vary,  towards 
and  from,  the  brutal  type — the  brain  case  of  an 
average  dolichocephalic  European  differing  far  less 
from  that  of  a  Negro,  for  example,  than  hie 
jaws  do.  In  the  absence  of  the  jaws,  then,  any 
judgment  on  the  relations  of  the  fossil  skulls  to 
recent  Races  must  be  accepted  with  a  certain 
reservation. 

But  taking  the  evidence  as  it  stands,  and  turn- 
ing first  to  the  Engis  skull,  I  confess  I  can  find 
no  character  in  the  remains  of  that  cranium  which, 
if  it  were  a  recent  skull,  would  give  any  trust- 
worthy clue  as  to  the  Race  to  which  it  might 
appertain.  Its  contours  and  measurements  agree 
very  well  with  those  of  some  Australian  skulls 
which  I  have  examined — and  especially  has  it  a 
tendency  towards  that  occipital  flattening,  to  the 
great  extent  of  which,  in  some  Australian  skulls,  I 
have  alluded.  But  all  Australian  skulls  do  not 
present  this  flattening,  and  the  supraciliary  ridge 


m  THE  FOSSIL  SKULLS.  205 

of  the  Engis  skull  is  quite  unlike  that  of  the  typical 
Australians. 

On  the  other  hand,  its  measurements  agree 
equally  well  with  those  of  some  European  skulls. 
And  assuredly,  there  is  no  mark  of  degradation 
about  any  part  of  its  structure.  It  is,  in  fact,  a 
fair  average  human  skull,  which  might  have  be- 
longed to  a  philosopher,  or  might  have  contained 
the  thoughtless  brains  of  a  savage. 

The  case  of  the  Neanderthal  skull  is  very  differ- 
ent. Under  whatever  aspect  we  view  this  cranium, 
whether  we  regard  its  vertical  depression,  the 
enormous  thickness  of  its  supraciliary  ridges,  its 
sloping  occiput,  or  its  long  and  straight  squamosal 
suture,  we  meet  with  ape-like  characters,  stamp- 
ing it  as  the  most  pithecoid  of  human  crania  yet 
discovered.  But  Professor  Schaaffhausen  states 
(supra,  p.  178),  that  the  cranium,  in  its  present 
condition,  holds  1033.24  cubic  centimetres  of 
water,  or  about  63  cubic  inches,  and  as  the  entire 
skull  could  hardly  have  held  less  than  an  additional 
12  cubic  inches,  its  capacity  may  be  estimated  at 
about  75  cubic  inches,  which  is  the  average  capac- 
ity given  by  Morton  for  Polynesian  and  Hottentot 
skulls. 

So  large  a  mass  of  brain  as  this,  would  alone 
suggest  that  the  pithecoid  tendencies,  indicated  by 
this  skull,  did  not  extend  deep  into  the  organiza- 
tion; and  this  conclusion  is  borne  out  by  the  di- 
mensions of  the  other  bones  of  the  skeleton  given 


206  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  m 

by  Professor  Sehaaffhausen,  which  show  that  the 
absolute  height  and  relative  proportions  of  the 
limbs,  were  quite  those  of  an  European  of  middle 
stature.  The  bones  are  indeed  stouter,  but  this 
and  the  great  development  of  the  muscular  ridges 
noted  by  Dr.  Sehaaffhausen,  are  characters  to  be 
expected  in  savages.  The  Patagonians,  exposed 
without  shelter  or  protection  to  a  climate  possibly 
not  very  dissimilar  from  that  of  Europe  at  the  time 
during  which  the  Neanderthal  man  lived,  are  re- 
markable for  the  stoutness  of  their  limb  bones. 

In  no  sense,  then,  can  the  Neanderthal  bones 
be  regarded  as  the  remains  of  a  human  being  inter- 
mediate between  Men  and  Apes.  At  most,  they 
demonstrate  the  existence  of  a  Man  whose  skull 
may  be  said  to  revert  somewhat  towards  the  pithe- 
coid type — just  as  a  Carrier,  or  a  Pouter,  or  a 
Tumbler,  may  sometimes  put  on  the  plumage  of 
its  primitive  stock,  the  Columba  livia.  And  in- 
deed, though  truly  the  most  pithecoid  of  known 
human  skulls,  the  Neanderthal  cranium  is  by  no 
means  so  isolated  as  it  appears  to  be  at  first,  but 
forms,  in  reality,  the  extreme  term  of  a  series  lead- 
ing gradually  from  it  to  the  highest  and  best  de- 
veloped of  human  crania.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is 
closely  approached  by  the  flattened  Australian 
skulls,  of  which  I  have  spoken,  from  which  other 
Australian  forms  lead  us  gradually  up  to  skulls 
having  very  much  the  type  of  the  Engis  cranium. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  even  more  closely 


Fig.  32. — Ancient  Danish  skull  from  a  tumulus  at 
Borreby;  one-third  of  the  natural  size.  From  a  camera 
iucida  drawing  by  Mr.  Busk. 


208  HUMAN  FOSSILS.  in 

affined  to  the  skulls  of  certain  ancient  people  who 
inhabited  Denmark  during  the  "  stone  period,"  and 
were  probably  either  contemporaneous  with,  or 
later  than,  the  makers  of  the  "  refuse  heaps,"  or 
"  Kjokkenmoddings  "  of  that  country. 

The  correspondence  between  the  longitudinal 
contour  of  the  Neanderthal  skull  and  that  of  some 
of  those  skulls  from  the  tumuli  at  Borreby,  very 
accurate  drawings  of  which  have  been  made  by 
Mr.  Busk,  is  very  close.  The  occiput  is  quite  as 
retreating,  the  supraciliary  ridges  are  nearly  as 
prominent,  and  the  skull  is  as  low.  Furthermore, 
the  Borreby  skull  resembles  the  Neanderthal  form 
more  closely  than  any  of  the  Australian  skulls  do, 
by  the  much  more  rapid  retrocession  of  the  fore- 
head. On  the  other  hand,  the  Borreby  skulls  are  all 
somewhat  broader,  in  proportion  to  their  length, 
than  the  Neanderthal  skull,  while  some  attain 
that  proportion  of  breadth  to  length  (80  :  100) 
which  constitutes  brachycephaly.* 

[*  For  a  further  discussion  of  the  characters  of  the 
Neanderthal  skull,  see  "  Natural  History  Review,"  1864. 
I  there  say  (p.  443):  "That  the  Neanderthal  skull  ex- 
hibits the  lowest  type  of  human  cranium  at  present 
known,  so  far  as  it  presents  certain  pithecoid  characters 
in  a  more  exaggerated  form  than  any  other:  but  that,  in- 
asmuch as  a  complete  series  of  gradations  can  be  found, 
among  recent  human  skulls,  between  it  and  the  best  de- 
veloped forms,  there  is  no  ground  for  separating  its  pos- 
sessor specifically,  still  less  generically,  from  Homo 
sapietis.  At  present,  we  have  no  sufficient  warranty  for 
declaring  it  to  be  either  the  type  of  a  distinct  race,  or  a 
member  of  any  existing  one :  nor  do  the  anatomical  char- 
acters of  the  skull  justify  any  conclusion  as  to  the  age  to 


m  ANCIENT  DANISH  SKULLS.  209 

In  conclusion,  I  may  say,  that  the  fossil  remains 
of  Man  hitherto  discovered  do  not  seem  to  me  to 
take  us  appreciably  nearer  to  that  lower  pithecoid 
form,  by  the  modification  of  which  he  has,  probably, 
become  what  he  is.  And  considering  what  is  now 
known  of  the  most  ancient  Eaees  of  men;  seeing 
that  they  fashioned  flint  axes  and  flint  knives  and 
bone-skewers,  of  much  the  same  pattern  as  those 
fabricated  by  the  lowest  savages  at  the  present  day, 
and  that  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  the  habits 
and  modes  of  living  of  such  people  to  have  re- 
mained the  same  from  the  time  of  the  Mammoth 
and  the  tichorhine  Rhinoceros  till  now,  I  do  not 
know  that  this  result  is  other  than  might  be  ex- 
pected. 

Where,  then,  must  we  look  for  primaeval  Man? 
"Was  the  oldest  Homo  sapiens  pliocene  or  miocene, 
or  yet  more  ancient?  In  still  older  strata  do  the 
fossilized  bones  of  an  ape  more  anthropoid,  or  a 
Man  more  pithecoid,  than  any  yet  known  await  the 
researches  of  some  unborn  paleontologist? 

Time  will  show.  But,  in  the  meanwhile,  if  any 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  progressive  development  is 
correct,  we  must  extend  by  long  epochs  the  most 
liberal  estimate  that  has  yet  been  made  of  the  an- 
tiquity of  Man. 

■which  it  belongs."    See  also  the  essay  on  the  Aryan  •=   i£8- 
tion  in  this  volume.    1894.] 

178 


IV. 


ON  THE  METHODS  AND  RESULTS   OF 
ETHNOLOGY. 

[1865.] 

Ethnology  is  the  science  which  determines 
the  distinctive  characters  of  the  persistent  modifica- 
tions of  mankind;  which  ascertains  the  distribution 
of  those  modifications  in  present  and  past  times, 
and  seeks  to  discover  the  causes,  or  conditions  of 
existence,  both  of  the  modifications  and  of  their 
distribution.  I  say  "  persistent  "  modifications, 
because,  unless  incidentally,  ethnology  has  nothing 
to  do  with  chance  and  transitory  peculiarities  of 
human  structure.  And  I  speak  of  "  persistent 
modifications  "  or  "  stocks  "  rather  than  of  "  varie- 
ties," or  "races,"  or  "species,"  because  each  of  these 
last  well-known  terms  implies,  on  the  part  of  its 
employer,  a  preconceived  opinion  touching  one  of 
those  problems,  the  solution  of  which  is  the  ulti- 
mate object  of  the  science;  and  in  regard  to  which, 
therefore,  ethnologists  are  especially  bound  to 
210 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    211 

keep  their  minds  open  and  their  judgments  freely 
balanced. 

Ethnology,  as  thus  defined,  is  a  branch  of  An- 
thropology, the  great  science  which  unravels  the 
complexities  of  human  structure;  traces  out  the  re- 
lations of  man  to  other  animals;  studies  all  that  is 
especially  human  in  the  mode  in  which  man's  com- 
plex functions  are  performed;  and  searches  after 
the  conditions  which  have  determined  his  presence 
in  the  world.  And  anthropology  is  a  section  of 
Zoology,  which  again  is  the  animal  half  of  Bi- 
ology— the  science  of  life  and  living  things. 

Such  is  the  position  of  ethnology,  such  are  the 
objects  of  the  ethnologist.  The  paths  or  methods, 
by  following  which  he  may  hope  to  reach  his 
goal,  are  diverse.  He  may  work  at  man  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  pure  zoologist,  and  investigate 
the  anatomical  and  physiological  peculiarities  of 
Negroes,  Australians,  or  Mongolians,  just  as  he 
would  inquire  into  those  of  pointers,  terriers,  and 
turnspits, — "  persistent  modifications  "  of  man's 
almost  universal  companion.  Or  he  may  seek  aid 
from  researches  into  the  most  human  manifesta- 
tion of  humanity — Language;  and  assuming  that 
what  is  true  of  speech  is  true  of  the  speaker — a 
hypothesis  as  questionable  in  science  as  it  is  in  ordi- 
nary life — he  may  apply  to  mankind  themselves^ 
the  conclusions  drawn  from  a  searching  analysis  of" 
their  words  and  grammatical  forms. 

Or,  the  ethnologist  may  turn  to  the  study  of 


212   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

the  practical  life  of  men;  and  relying  upon  the 
inherent  conservatism  and  small  inventiveness  of 
untutored  mankind,  he  may  hope  to  discover  in 
manners  and  customs,  or  in  weapons,  dwellings, 
and  other  handiwork,  a  clue  to  the  origin  of  the 
resemblances  and  differences  of  nations.  Or,  he 
may  resort  to  that  kind  of  evidence  which  is 
yielded  by  History  proper,  and  consists  of  the  be- 
liefs of  men  concerning  past  events,  embodied  in 
traditional,  or  in  written  testimony.  Or,  when  that 
thread  breaks.  Archaeology,  which  is  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  unrecorded  remains  of  man's  works, 
belonging  to  the  epoch  since  the  world  has  reached 
its  present  condition,  may  still  guide  him.  And, 
when  even  the  dim  light  of  archaeology  fades,  there 
yet  remains  Palaeontology,  which,  in  these  latter 
years  has  brought  to  daylight  once  more  the  exuvia 
of  ancient  populations,  whose  world  was  not  our 
world,  who  have  been  buried  in  river  beds  imme- 
morially  dry,  or  carried  by  the  rush  of  waters  into 
caves,  inaccessible  to  inundation  since  the  dawn  of 
tradition. 

Along  each,  or  all,  of  these  paths  the  ethnolo- 
gist may  press  towards  his  goal;  but  they  are  not 
equally  straight,  or  sure,  or  easy  to  tread.  The 
way  of  palaeontology  has  but  just  been  laid  open 
to  us.  Archaeological  and  historical  investigations 
are  of  great  value  for  all  those  peoples  whose  an- 
cient state  has  differed  widely  from  their  present 
condition,  and  who  have  the  good  or  evil  fortune  to 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  213 

possess  a  history.  But  on  taking  a  broad  survey  of 
the  world,  it  is  astonishing  how  few  nations  present 
either  condition.  Eespecting  five-sixths  of  the  per- 
sistent modifications  of  mankind,  history  and 
archaeology  are  absolutely  silent.  For  half  the  rest, 
they  might  as  well  be  silent  for  anything  that  is  to 
be  made  of  their  testimony.  And,  finally,  when 
the  question  arises  as  to  what  was  the  condition  of 
mankind  more  than  a  paltry  two  or  three  thou- 
sand years  ago,  history  and  archaeology  are,  for  the 
most  part,  mere  dumb  dogs.  What  light  does 
either  of  these  branches  of  knowledge  throw  on  the 
past  of  the  man  of  the  New  World,  if  we  except  the 
Central  Americans  and  the  Peruvians;  on  that  of 
the  Africans,  save  those  of  the  Valley  of  the  Nile 
and  a  fringe  of  the  Mediterranean;  on  that  of  all 
the  Polynesian,  Australian,  and  central  Asiatic 
peoples,  the  former  of  whom  probably,  and  the  last 
certainly,  were,  at  the  dawn  of  history,  substan- 
tially what  they  are  now?  While  thankfully  ac- 
cepting what  history  has  to  give  him,  therefore, 
the  ethnologist  must  not  look  for  too  much  from 
her. 

Is  more  to  be  expected  from  inquiries  into  the 
customs  and  handicrafts  of  man?  It  is  to  be  feared 
not.  In  reasoning  from  identity  of  custom  to  iden- 
tity of  stock  the  difficulty  always  obtrudes  itself, 
that  the  minds  of  men  being  everywhere  similar, 
differing  in  quality  and  quantity  but  not  in  kind 
of  faculty,  like  circumstances  must  tend  to  produce 


214   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

like  contrivances;  at  any  rate,  so  long  as  the  need 
to  be  met  and  conquered  is  of  a  very  simple  kind. 
That  two  nations  use  calabashes  or  shells  for  drink- 
ing-vessels,  or  that  they  employ  spears,  or  clubs,  or 
fiwords  and  axes  of  stone  and  metal  as  weapons  and 
implements,  cannot  be  regarded  as  evidence  that 
these  two  nations  had  a  common  origin,  or  even 
that  intercommunication  ever  took  place  between 
them;  seeing  that  the  convenience  of  using  cala- 
bashes or  shells  for  such  purposes,  and  the  advan- 
tage of  poking  an  enemy  with  a  sharp  stick,  or 
hitting  him  with  a  heavy  one,  must  be  early  forced 
by  nature  upon  the  mind  of  even  the  stupidest  sav- 
age.    And  when  he  had  found  out  the  use  of  a 
stick,  he  would  need  no  prompting  to  discover  the 
value  of  a  chipped  or  whetted  stone,  or  of  an  an- 
gular piece  of  native  metal,  for  the  same  object. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  doubted,  whether  the 
chances  are  not  greatly  against  independent  peo- 
ples arriving  at  the  manufacture  of  a  boomerang, 
or  of  a  bow;  which  last,  if  one  comes  to  think  of  it, 
is  a  rather  complicated  apparatus;  and  the  tracing 
of  the  distribution  of  inventions  as  complex  as 
these,  and  of  such  strange  customs  as  betel-chew- 
ing and  tobacco-smoking,  may  afford  valuable  eth- 
nological hints. 

Since  the  time  of  Leibnitz,  and  guided  by  such 
men  as  Humboldt,  Abel  Remusat,  and  Klaproth, 
Philology  has  taken  far  higher  ground.  Thus 
Prichard   affirms   that   "  the   history   of   nations. 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    215 

termed  Ethnology,  must  be  mainly  founded  on  the 
relations  of  their  languages." 

An  eminent  living  philologer,  August 
Schleicher,  in  a  recent  essay,  puts  forward  the 
claims  of  his  science  still  more  forcibly: — 

"  If,  however,  language  is  the  human  kot'  ^Iox^v,  the 
suggestion  arises  whether  it  should  not  form  the  basis  of 
any  scientific  systematic  arrangement  of  mankind; 
whether  the  foundation  of  the  natural  classification  of  the 
genus  Homo  has  not  been  discovered  in  it. 

"  How  little  constant  are  cranial  peculiarities  and  other 
so-called  race  characters!  Language,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  always  a  perfectly  constant  diagnostic.  A  German 
may  occasionally  compete  in  hair  and  prognathism  with 
a  negro,  but  a  negro  language  will  never  be  his  mother 
tongue.  Of  how  little  importance  for  mankind  the  so- 
called  race  characters  are,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
speakers  of  languages  belonging  to  one  and  the  same 
linguistic  family  may  exhibit  the  peculiarities  of  various 
races.  Thus  the  settled  Osmanli  Turk  exhibits  Caucasian 
characters,  whilst  other  so-called  Tartaric  Turks  exem- 
plify the  Mongol  type.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Magyar 
and  the  Basque  do  not  depart  in  any  essential  physical 
peculiarity  from  the  Indo-Germans,  whilst  the  Magyar, 
Basque,  and  Indo-Gerraanic  tongues  are  widely  different. 
Apart  from  their  inconstancy,  again,  the  so-called  race 
characters  can  hardly  yield  a  scientifically  natural  system. 
Languages,  on  the  other  hand,  readily  fall  into  a  natural 
arrangement,  like  that  of  which  other  vital  products  are 
susceptible,  especially  when  viewed  from  their  morpho- 
logical side.  .  .  .  The  externally  visible  structure  of  the 
cerebral  and  facial  skeletons,  and  of  the  body  generally, 
is  less  important  than  that  no  less  material  but  infinitely 
more  delicate  corporeal  structure,  the  function  of  which 


216  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

is  speech.  I  conceive,  therefore,  that  the  natural  classi- 
fication of  languages,  is  also  the  natural  classification  of 
mankind.  With  language,  moreover,  all  the  higher  mani- 
festations of  man's  vital  activity  are  closely  interwoven, 
so  that  these  receive  due  recognition  in  and  by  that  of 
speech."  * 

Without  the  least  desire  to  depreciate  the  value 
of  philology  as  an  adjuvant  to  ethnology,  I  must 
venture  to  doubt,  with  Rudolphi,  Desmouhns, 
Crawfurd,  and  others,  its  title  to  the  leading 
position  claimed  for  it  by  the  writers  whom  I  have 
just  quoted.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  ob- 
vious that,  though,  in  the  absence  of  any  evidence 
to  the  contrary,  unity  of  languages  may  afford 
a  certain  presumption  in  favour  of  the  unity  of 
stock  of  the  peoples  speaking  those  languages, 
it  cannot  be  held  to  prove  that  unity  of  stock,  un- 
less philologers  are  prepared  to  demonstrate,  that 
no  nation  can  lose  its  language  and  acquire  that  of 
a  distinct  nation,  without  a  change  of  blood  corre- 
sponding with  the  change  of  language.  Desmou- 
lins  long  ago  put  this  argument  exceedingly  well: — 

"  Let  us  imagine  the  recurrence  of  one  of  those  slow, 
or  sudden,  political  revolutions,  or  say  of  those  secular 
changes  which  among  difi"erent  people  and  at  diflFerent 
epochs  have  annihilated  historical  monuments  and  even 
extinguished  tradition.  In  that  case,  the  evidence,  now 
so  clear,  that  the  negroes  of  Hayti  were  slaves  imported 


•August  Schleicher.  Ueber  di^  Bedeidung  der 
Sprache  fiir  die  Naturgeschichte  des  Memchen,  pp.  16 
—18.    Weimar,  1858. 


]yiETHODs  A^^)  results  of  ethnology.  217 

"by  a  French  colony,  who,  by  the  very  effect  of  the  sub- 
ordination involved  in  slavery  lost  their  own  diverse  lan- 
guages and  adopted  that  of  their  masters,  would  vanish. 
And  metaphysical  philosophers,  observing  the  identity  of 
Haytian  French  with  that  spoken  on  the  shores  of  the 
Seine  and  the  Loire,  would  argue  that  the  men  of  St. 
Domingo  with  woolly  heads,  black  and  oily  skins,  small 
calves,  and  slightly  bent  knees,  are  of  the  same  race,  de- 
scended from  the  same  parental  stock,  as  the  Frenchmen 
with  silky  brown,  chestnut,  or  fair  hair,  and  white  skins. 
For  they  would  say,  their  languages  are  more  similar  than 
French  is  to  German  or  Spanish."  * 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  the  case  put  by 
DesmouUns  is  a  merely  hypothetical  one.  Events 
precisely  similar  to  the  transport  of  a  body  of 
Africans  to  the  West  India  Islands,  indeed,  cannot 
have  happened  among  uncivilised  races,  but 
similar  results  have  followed  the  importation  of 
bodies  of  conquerors  among  an  enslaved  people  over 
and  over  again.  There  is  hardly  a  country  in  Eu- 
rope in  which  two  or  more  nations  speaking  widely 
different  tongues  have  not  become  intermixed;  and 
there  is  hardly  a  language  of  Europe  of  which  we 
have  any  right  to  think  that  its  structure  affords  a 
just  indication  of  the  amount  of  that  intermixture. 

As  Dr.  Latham  has  well  said: — 

"  It  is  certain  that  the  language  of  England  is  of  An- 
glo-Saxon origin,  and  that  the  remains  of  the  original 
Keltic  are  unimportant.  It  is  by  no  means  so  certain  that 
the  blood  of  Englishmen  is  equally  Germanic.     A  vast 

*  Desmoulins,  Eistoire  'Saturelle  dm  Races  Eumaines, 
p.  345,  1826. 


218    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OP  ETHNOLOGY. 

amount  of  Kelticism,  not  found  in  our  tongue,  very 
probably  exists  in  our  pedigrees.  The  ethnology  of 
France  is  still  more  complicated.  Many  writers  make  the 
Parisian  a  Roman  on  the  strength  of  his  language ;  whilst 
others  make  him  a  Kelt  on  the  strength  of  certain  moral 
characteristics,  combined  with  the  previous  Kelticism  of 
the  original  Gauls.  Spanish  and  Portuguese,  as  languages, 
are  derivations  from  the  Latin;  Spain  and  Portugal,  as 
countries,  are  Iberic,  Latin,  Gothic,  and  Arab,  in  dif- 
ferent proportions.  Italian  is  modern  Latin  all  the  world 
over;  yet  surely  there  must  be  much  Keltic  blood  in 
Lombardy,  and  much  Etruscan  intermixture  in  Tuscany. 
"  In  the  ninth  century  every  man  between  the  Elbe 
and  the  Niemen  spoke  some  Slavonic  dialect;  they  now 
nearly  all  speak  German.  Surely  the  blood  is  less  ex- 
clusively Gothic  than  the  speech."  * 

In  other  words,  what  philologer,  if  he  had  noth- 
ing but  the  vocabulary  and  grammar  of  the  French 
and  English  languages  to  guide  him,  would  dream 
of  the  real  causes  of  the  unlikeness  of  a  Norman  to 
a  Provengal,  of  an  Orcadian  to  a  Cornishman? 
How  readily  might  he  be  led  to  suppose  that  the 
different  climatal  conditions  to  which  these  speak- 
ers of  one  tongue  have  so  long  been  exposed,  have 
caused  their  physical  differences;  and  how  little 
would  he  suspect  that  these  are  due  (as  we  happen 
to  know  they  are)  to  wide  differences  of  blood. 

Few  take  duly  into  account  the  evidence  which 
exists  as  to  the  ease  with  which  unlettered  savages 
gain  or  lose  a  language.  Captain  Erskine,  in  his 
interesting  "  Journal  of  a  Cruise  among  the  Islands 

•  Latham,  Man  and  his  Migrations,  p.  17L 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.   219 

of  the  Western  Pacific,"  especially  remarks  upon 
the  "  avidity  with  which  the  inhabitants  of  the 
polyglot  islands  of  Melanesia,  from  New  Caledonia 
to  the  Solomon  Islands,  adopt  the  improvements 
of  a  more  perfect  language  than  their  own,  which 
different  causes  and  accidental  communication  still 
continue  to  bring  to  them; "  and  he  adds  that 
"  among  the  Melanesian  islands  scarcely  one  was 
found  by  us  which  did  not  possess,  in  some  cases 
still  imperfectly,  the  decimal  system  of  numeration 
in  addition  to  their  own,  in  which  they  reckon  only 
to  five." 

Yet  how  much  philological  reasoning  in  favour 
of  the  affinity  or  diversity  of  two  distinct  peoples 
has  been  based  on  the  mere  comparison  of 
numerals! 

But  the  most  instructive  example  of  the  fallacy 
which  may  attach  to  merely  philological  reason- 
ings, is  that  afforded  by  the  Feejeans,  who  are, 
physically,  so  intimately  connected  with  the  ad- 
jacent Negritos  of  New  Caledonia,  &c.,  that  no 
one  can  doubt  to  what  stock  they  belong,  and 
who  yet,  in  the  form  and  substance  of  their 
language,  are  Polynesian.  The  case  is  as  remark- 
able as  if  the  Canary  Islands  should  have  been 
found  to  be  inhabited  by  negroes  speaking  Arabic, 
or  some  other  clearly  Semitic  dialect,  as  their 
mother  tongue.  As  it  happens,  the  physical 
peculiarities  of  the  Feejeans  are  so  striking,  and 
the  conditions  under  which  they  live  are  so  similar 


220   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

to  those  of  the  Polynesians,  that  no  one  has  ven- 
tured to  suggest  that  they  are  merely  modified 
Polynesians — a  suggestion  which  could  otherwise 
certainly  have  been  made.  But  if  languages  may 
be  thus  transferred  from  one  stock  to  another, 
without  any  corresponding  intermixture  of  blood, 
what  ethnological  value  has  philology? — what  se- 
curity does  unity  of  language  afford  us  that  the 
speakers  of  that  language  may  not  have  sprung 
from  two,  or  three,  or  a  dozen,  distinct  sources? 

Thus  we  come,  at  last,  to  the  purely  zoological 
method,  from  which  it  is  not  unnatural  to  expect 
more  than  from  any  other,  seeing  that,  after  all, 
the  problems  of  ethnology  are  simply  those  which 
are  presented  to  the  zoologist  by  every  widely  dis- 
tributed animal  he  studies.  The  father  of  modern 
zoology  seems  to  have  had  no  doubt  upon  this  point. 
At  the  twenty-eighth  page  of  the  standard  twelfth 
edition  of  the  "  Systema  Naturae,"  in  fact,  we 

find: — 

I.  Primates. 

Denies  primores  incisores :  sriperiores  IV.  paraUeliy 
mamrruB  peeiorales  II, 

1.  Homo.  Nosoe  te  ipsum. 

Sapiens,  1.  H.  diurnus :  varians  cultura,  loco, 

Ferus.  Tetrapus,  mutus,  hirsutus. 

Americanus  a,  Rufus,  cholericus,  rectus — Pilis  nigrls,  reo- 
tis,  crassis — Naribus  patulis — Facie  ephe- 
litica :  Mento  subimberbi. 

Fertinax,  contentus,  liber.  Pingit  se  lineis 
daedaleis  rubris. 

Regitur  Consuetudine. 


METHODS  AKD  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    221 


Europceus     $,  Albus  sanguineus  torosus.    Pilis  flavescen* 
tibus,  proliiis. 
Oculis  cceruleis. 

Levis,   argutus,  inventor.      Tegitur  Vesti- 
mentis  arctis,     Regitur  Ritibus. 
Aaiaticus      y.  Luridus,  melancholicus,  rigidus.    Pilta  ni- 
gricantibus.     Oculis  fuscis.     Severus,  fas- 
tuosus,  avarus.    Tegitur  Indumentis  laxis. 
Regitur  Opinionibus. 
Afer  8.   Niger,  phlegmaticus,  laxus.    Pilis  atris,  con- 

tortuplicatis.      Cute  holosericea.      Naso 
simo.    Labiis    tumidis,    Feminia    sinus 
pudoris. 
MammcB  lactantes  prolixa8. 
Vafer,  segnis,  negligens.     Ungit  se  pingui 
Regitur  Arbitrio. 
Monstrosua    e.  Solo  (a)  et  arte  (b  c)  variat. : 

a.  Alpini  parvi,  agiles,  timidi. 
Patagonici  magni,  segnes. 

b.  Monorchides  ut  minus  fertiles:  Hotten- 

totti. 
Juneece-  puellre,  abdomine  attenuate :  Eu- 
ropaeae. 

c.  Macrocephali  capiti  conico :  Chinenses. 
Plagiocephali  capite  antice  compresso : 

Canadenses. 

Turn  a  few  pages  further  on  in  the  same  vol- 
ume, and  there  appears,  with  a  fine  impartiality 
in  the  distribution  of  capitals  and  subdivisional 
headings: — 

III.  Feb^. 
Denies  primores  superiores  sex,  acutiusculi.    Canini 

aolitarii. 

12.  Canis.  Denies  primores  superiores  VI. :   laterales 

longiores  distantes:  intermedii  lobati.  In- 
feriores  VI. :  laterales  lobati. 


222   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OP  ETHNOLOGY. 

Laniarii  solitarii,  incurvati. 
Molares  VI.  s.  VIL  (pluresve  quam  in  reli- 
quis.) 

familiaris    1.   C.  Cauda  (sinistrorsum)  recurvata 

domesticua    a.   auriculis  erectis,  cauda  subtus  lanata. 
sagax  p.   auriculis  pendulis,  digito  spurio  ad  tibias 

posticas. 
grajus  y.  magnitudine  lupi,  trunco  curvato,  rostro  at- 

tenuate, &c.  &c. 

Linnaeus'  definition  of  what  he  considers  to  be 
mere  varieties  of  the  species  Man  are,  it  will  he 
ohserved,  as  completely  free  from  any  allusion  to 
linguistic  peculiarities  as  those  brief  and  pregnant 
sentences  in  which  he  sketches  the  characters  of 
the  varieties  of  the  species  Dog.  "  Pilis  nigris, 
naribus  patulis "  may  be  set  against  "  auriculis 
erectis,  cauda  subtus  lanata; "  while  the  remarks 
on  the  morals  and  manners  of  the  human  subject 
seem  as  if  they  were  thrown  in  merely  by  way  of 
makeweight. 

Buffon,  Blumenbach  (the  founder  of  ethnology 
as  a  special  science),  Rudolphi,  Bory  de  St. 
Vincent,  Desmoulins,  Cuvier,  Retzius,  indeed  I 
may  say  all  the  naturalists  proper,  have  dealt  with 
man  from  a  no  less  completely  zoological  point  of 
view;  while,  as  might  have  been  expected,  those 
who  have  been  least  naturalists,  and  most  lin- 
guists, have  most  neglected  the  zoological  method, 
the  neglect  culminating  in  those  who  have  been 
altogether  devoid  of  acquaintance  with  anatomy. 

Prichard's  proposition,  that  language  is  more 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.   223 

persistent  than  physical  characters,  is  one  which 
has  never  been  proved,  and  indeed  admits  of  no 
proof,  seeing  that  the  records  of  language  do  not 
extend  so  far  as  those  of  physical  characters. 
But,  until  the  superior  tenacity  of  linguistic  over 
physical  peculiarities  is  shown,  and  until  the 
abundant  evidence  which  exists,  that  the  language 
of  a  people  may  change  without  corresponding 
physical  change  in  that  people,  is  shown  to  be 
valueless,  it  is  plain  that  the  zoological  court  of 
appeal  is  the  highest  for  the  ethnologist,  and  that 
no  evidence  can  be  set  against  that  derived  from 
physical  characters. 

What,  then,  will  a  new  survey  of  mankind  from 
the  Linnean  point  of  view  teach  us? 

The  great  antipodal  block  of  land  we  call  Aus- 
tralia has,  speaking  roughly,  the  form  of  a  vast 
quadrangle,  2,000  miles  on  the  side,  and  extends 
from  the  hottest  tropical,  to  the  middle  of  the  tem- 
perate, zone.  Setting  aside  the  foreign  colonists 
introduced  within  the  last  century,  it  is  inhabited 
by  people  no  less  remarkable  for  the  uniformity, 
than  for  the  singularity,  of  their  physical  charac- 
ters and  social  state.  For  the  most  part  of  fair 
stature,  erect  and  well  built,  except  for  an  un- 
usual slenderness  of  the  lower  limbs,  the  Aus- 
tralians have  dark,  usually  chocolate-coloured 
skins;  fine  dark  wavy  hair;  dark  eyes,  overhung  by 
beetle  brows;  coarse,  projecting  jaws;  broad  and 


224  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

dilated,  but  not  especially  flattened,  noses,  and 
lips  which,  though  prominent,  are  eminently 
flexible. 

The  skulls  of  these  people  are  always  long  and 
narrow,  with  a  smaller  development  of  the  frontal 
sinuses  than  usually  corresponds  with  such  largely 
developed  brow  ridges.  An  Australian  skull  of  a 
round  form,  or  one  the  transverse  diameter  of 
which  exceeds  eight-tenths  of  its  length,  has 
never  been  seen.  These  people,  in  a  word,  are 
eminently  "  dolichocephalic,"  or  long-headed;  but, 
with  this  one  limitation,  their  crania  present  con- 
siderable variations,  some  being  comparatively 
high  and  arched,  while  others  are  more  remarkably 
depressed  than  almost  any  other  human  skulls. 
The  female  pelvis  differs  comparatively  little  from 
the  European;  but  in  the  pelves  of  male  Austra- 
lians which  I  have  examined,  the  antero-posterior 
and  transverse  diameters  approach  equality  more 
nearly  than  is  the  case  in  Europeans. 

No  Australian  tribe  has  ever  been  known  to 
cultivate  the  ground,*  to  use  metals,  pottery,  or 
any  kind  of  textile  fabric.  They  rarely  construct 
huts.  Their  means  of  navigation  are  limited  to 
rafts  or  canoes,  made  of  sheets  of  bark.  Clothing, 
except  skin  cloaks  for  protection  from  cold,  is  a 

[*  At  Cape  York  we  found  that  the  natives  had  learned 
from  their  Papuan  neighbours  to  grow  a  little  coarse 
tobacco;  and,  elsewhere,  yams  are  said  to  be  grown,  but 
hardly  cultivated.  Plaiting,  basket-making,  and  netting 
are  practised. — 1894.] 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.   225 

superfluity  with  which  they  dispense;  and  though 
they  have  some  singular  weapons,  almost  peculiar 
to  themselves,  they  are  wholly  unacquainted  with 
bows  and  arrows. 

It  is  but  a  step,  as  it  were,  across  Bass's  Straits 
to  Tasmania.  Neither  climate  nor  the  character- 
istic forms  of  vegetable  or  animal  life  change 
largely  on  the  south  side  of  the  Straits,  but  the 
early  voyagers  found  Man  singularly  different  from 
him  on  the  north  side.  The  skin  of  the  Tasmanian 
was  dark,  though  he  lived  between  parallels  of  lati- 
tude corresponding  with  those  of  middle  Europe  in 
our  own  hemisphere;  his  jaws  projected,  his  head 
was  long  and  narrow;  his  civilization  was  about  on 
a  footing  with  that  of  the  Australian,  if  not  lower, 
for  I  cannot  discover  that  the  Tasmanian  under- 
stood the  use  of  the  throwing-stick.  But  he  dif- 
fered from  the  Australian  in  his  woolly,  negro-like 
hair;  whence  the  name  of  Negrito,  which  has 
been  applied  to  him  and  his  congeners. 

Such  Negritos — differing  more  or  less  from  the 
Tasmanian  but  agreeing  with  him  in  dark  skin  and 
woolly  hair — occupy  New  Caledonia,  the  New  Heb- 
rides, the  Louisiade  Archipelago;  and  stretching 
to  the  Papuan  Islands,  and  for  a  doubtful  extent 
beyond  them  to  the  north  and  west,  form  a  sort 
of  belt,  or  zone,  of  Negrito  population,  interposed 
between  the  Australians  on  the  west  and  the  in- 
habitants of  the  great  majority  of  the  Pacific  islands 
on  the  east. 


226   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

The  cranial  characters  of  the  Negritos  vary  con- 
siderably more  than  those  of  their  skin  and  hair, 
the  most  notable  circumstance  being  the  strong 
Australian  aspect  which  distinguishes  many  Ne- 
grito skulls,  while  others  tend  rather  towards  forms 
common  in  the  Polynesian  islands. 

In  civilization,  New  Caledonia  exhibits  an  ad- 
vance upon  Tasmania,  and,  farther  north,  there  is 
a  still  greater  improvement.  But  the  bows  and 
arrows,  the  perched  houses,  the  outrigger  canoes, 
the  habits  of  betel-chewing  and  of  kawa-drinking, 
which  abound  more  or  less  among  the  northern 
Negritos,  are  probably  to  be  regarded  not  as  the 
products  of  an  indigenous  civilization,  but  merely 
as  indications  of  the  extent  to  which  foreign 
influences  have  modified  the  primitive  social  state 
of  these  people. 

From  Tasmania  or  New  Caledonia,  to  New 
Zealand  or  Tongataboo,  is  again  but  a  brief 
voyage:  but  it  brings  about  a  still  more  notable 
change  in  the  aspect  of  the  indigenous  population 
than  that  effected  by  the  passage  of  Bass's  Straits. 
Instead  of  being  chocolate-coloured  people,  the 
Maories  and  Tongans  are  light  brown;  instead  of 
woolly,  they  have  straight,  or  wavy,  black  hair. 
And  if  from  New  Zealand,  we  travel  some  5,000 
miles  east  to  Easter  Island;  and  from  Easter  Island, 
for  as  great  a  distance  north-west,  to  the  Sandwich 
Islands;  and  thence  7,000  miles,  westward  and 
southward,    to    Sumatra;    and    even    across    the 


METHODS  AXD  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.   227 

Indian  Ocean,  into  the  interior  of  Madagascar,  we 
shall  everywhere  meet  with  people  whose  hair  is 
straight  or  wavy,  and  whose  skins  exhibit  various 
shades  of  brown.  These  are  the  Polynesians, 
Micronesians,  Indonesians,  whom  Latham  has 
grouped  together  under  the  common  title  of 
Amphinesians. 

The  cranial  characters  of  these  people,  as  of  the 
Negritos,  are  less  constant  than  those  of  their  skin 
and  hair.  The  Maori  has  a  long  skull;  the  Sand- 
wich Islander  a  broad  skull.  Some,  like  these, 
have  strong  brow  ridges;  others  like  the  Dayaks 
and  many  Polynesians,  have  hardly  any  nasal  in- 
dentation. It  is  only  in  the  westernmost  parts  of 
their  area  that  the  Amphinesian  nations  know  any- 
thing about  bows  and  arrows  as  weapons,  or  are 
acquainted  with  the  use  of  metals  or  with  pottery. 
Everywhere  they  cultivate  the  ground,  construct 
houses,  and  skilfully  build  and  manage  outrigger, 
or  double,  canoes;  while,  almost  everywhere,  they 
use  some  kind  of  fabric  for  clothing. 

Between  Easter  Island,  or  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
and  any  part  of  the  American  coast  is  a  much  wider 
interval  than  that  between  Tasmania  and  New 
Zealand,  but  the  ethnological  interval  between  the 
American  and  the  Polynesian  is  less  than  that  be- 
tween either  of  the  previously  named  stocks. 

The  typical  American  has  straight  black  hair 
and  dark  eyes,  his  skin  exhibiting  various  shades 
of  reddish  or  yellowish  brown,  sometimes  inclining 


228   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

to  olive.  The  face  is  broad  and  scantily  bearded; 
the  skull  wide  and  high.  Such  people  extend 
from  Patagonia  to  Mexico,  and  much  farther  north 
along  the  west  coast.  In  the  main  a  race  of 
hunters,  they  had  nevertheless,  at  the  time  of  the 
discovery  of  the  Americas,  attained  a  remarkable 
degree  of  civilization  in  some  localities.  They  had 
domesticated  ruminants,  and  not  only  practised 
agriculture,  but  had  learned  the  value  of  irrigation. 
They  manufactured  textile  fabrics,  were  masters 
of  the  potter's  art,  and  knew  how  to  erect  massive 
buildings  of  stone.  They  understood  the  working 
of  the  precious,  though  not  of  the  useful,  metals;  * 
and  had  even  attained  to  a  rude  kind  of  hiero- 
glyphic, or  picture,  writing.  The  Americans  not 
only  employ  the  bow  and  arrow,  but,  like  some 
Amphinesians,  the  blow-pipe,  as  offensive  weapons: 
but  I  am  not  aware  that  the  outrigger  canoe  has 
ever  been  observed  among  them. 

I  have  reason  to  suspect  that  some  of  the 
Fuegian  tribes  differ  cranially  from  the  typical 
Americans;  f  and  the  Northern  and  Eastern 
American  tribes  have  longer  skulls  than  their 
Southern  compatriots.  But  the  Esquimaux,  who 
roam  on  the  desolate  and  ice-bound  coast  of  Arctic 
America,  certainly  present  us  with  a  new  stock. 
The  Esquimaux  (among  whom  the  Greenlanders 

[*  With  the  exception  of  copper  and  bronze. — 1894.] 
[t  A  suspicion  subsequently  verified.    See  a  memoir  on 

American  Skulls,  Journal  of  Anatomy  and  Physiology. 

Vol.  16.— 1894.] 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.   229 

are  included),  in  fact,  though  they  share  the 
straight  black  hair  of  the  proper  Americans,  are 
generally  a  duller  complexioned,  shorter,  and  a 
more  squat  people,  and  they  have  still  more  promi- 
nent cheek-bones.  But  the  circumstance  which 
most  completely  separates  them  from  the  typical 
Americans,  is  the  form  of  their  skulls,  which  in- 
stead of  being  broad,  high,  and  truncated  behind, 
are  eminently  long,  usually  low,  and  prolonged 
backwards.  These  Hyperborean  people  clothe 
themselves  in  skins,  know  nothing  of  pottery,  and 
hardly  anything  of  metals.  Dependent  for  exist- 
ence upon  the  produce  of  the  chase,  the  seal  and 
the  whale  are  to  them  what  the  cocoa-nut  tree  and 
the  plantain  are  to  the  savages  of  more  genial 
climates.  Not  only  are  those  animals  meat  and 
raiment,  but  they  are  canoes,  sledges,  weapons, 
tools,  windows,  and  fire;  while  they  support  the 
dog,  who  is  the  indispensable  ally  and  beast  of  bur- 
den of  the  Esquimaux. 

It  is  admitted  that  the  Tchuktchi,  on  the  east- 
ern side  of  Behring's  Straits,  are,  in  all  essential 
respects,  Esquimaux;  and  I  do  not  know  that  there 
is  any  satisfactory  evidence  to  show  that  the  Tun- 
guses  and  Samoiedes  do  not  essentially  share  the 
same  physical  characters.  Southward,  there  are 
indications  of  Esquimaux  characters  among  the 
Japanese,  and  it  is  possible  that  their  influence  may 
be  traced  yet  further. 

However  this  may  be.  Eastern  Asia,  from  Mant- 


230   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

chouria  to  Siam,  Thibet,  and  Northern  Hindostan, 
is  continuously  inhabited  by  men,  usually  of  short 
stature,  with  skins  varying  in  colour  from  yellow 
to  olive;  with  broad  cheek-bones  and  faces  that, 
owing  to  the  insignificance  of  the  nose,  are  exceed- 
ingly flat;  and  with  small,  obliquely-set  *  black 
eyes  and  straight  black  hair,  which  sometimes  at- 
tains a  very  great  length  upon  the  scalp,  but  is 
always  scanty  upon  the  face  and  body.  The  skull, 
never  much  elongated,  is,  generally,  remarkably 
broad  and  rounded,  with  hardly  any  nasal  depres- 
sion, and  but  slight,  if  any,  projection  of  the  jaws. 
Many  of  these  people,  from  whom  the  old  name  of 
Mongolians  may  be  retained,  are  nomades;  others, 
as  the  Chinese,  have  attained  a  remarkable  and  ap- 
parently indigenous  civilization,  only  surpassed  by 
that  of  Europe. 

At  the  north-western  extremity  of  Europe  the 
Lapps  repeat  the  characters  of  the  Eastern 
Asiatics.  Between  these  extreme  points,  the 
Mongolian  stock  is  not  continuous,  but  is  repre- 
sented by  a  chain  of  more  or  less  isolated  tribes, 
who  pass  under  the  name  of  Calmucks  and  Tar- 
tars, and  form  Mongolian  islands,  as  it  were,  in  the 
midst  of  an  ocean  of  other  people. 

The  waves  of  this  ocean  are  the  nations  for 
whom,  in  order  to  avoid  the  endless  confusion  pro- 
duced  by   our   present   half-physical,   half-philo- 

[*  The  obliquity,  it  must  be  recollected,  is  not  in  the 
position  of  the  eyeball  but  arises  from  the  arrangement 
of  the  skin  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  eyelids. — 1894.] 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.   231 

logical  classification,  I  shall  use  a  new  name — 
Xanthochroi — indicating  that  they  are  "  yellow  " 
haired  and  "  pale  "  in  complexion.  The  Chinese 
historians  of  the  Plan  dynasty,  writing  in  the  third 
century  before  our  era,  describe,  with  much 
minuteness,  certain  numerous  and  powerful  bar- 
barians with  "  yellow  hair,  green  eyes,  and  promi- 
nent noses,"  who,  the  black-haired,  skew-eyed,  and 
flat-nosed  annalists  remark  in  passing,  are  "  just 
like  the  apes  from  whom  they  are  descended." 
These  people  held,  in  force,  the  upper  waters  of 
the  Yenisei,  and  thence  under  various  names 
stretched  southward  to  Thibet  and  Kashgar. 
Fair-haired  and  blue-eyed  northern  enemies  were 
no  less  known  to  the  ancient  Hindoos,  to  the  Per- 
sians, and  to  the  P]gyptians,  on  the  south  and  west 
of  the  great  central  Asiatic  area;  while  the  testi- 
mony of  all  European  antiquity  is  to  the  effect  that, 
before  and  since  the  period  in  question,  there  lay 
beyond  the  Danube,  the  Rhine,  and  the  Seine,  a 
vast  and  dangerous  yellow  or  red-haired,  fair- 
skinned,  blue-eyed  population.  Whether  the  dis- 
turbers of  the  marches  of  the  Roman  Empire  were 
called  Gauls  or  Germans,  Goths,  Alans,  or  Scyth- 
ians, one  thing  seems  certain,  that  until  the  in- 
vasion of  the  Huns,  they  were  largely  tall,  fair, 
blue-eyed  men. 

If  any  one  should  think  fit  to  assume  that,  in 
the  year  100  b.  c,  there  was  one  continuous  Xan- 
thochroic  population  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Yeni- 


232   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

sei,  and  from  the  Ural  mountains  to  the  Hindoo 
Koosh,  I  know  not  that  any  evidence  exists  by 
which  that  position  could  be  upset,  while  the  ex- 
isting state  of  things  is  rather  in  its  favour  than 
otherwise.  For  the  Scandinavians,  the  Germans, 
the  Slavonian  and  the  Finnish  tribes,  to  a  great 
extent;  some  of  the  inhabitants  of  Greece,  many 
Turks,  some  Kirghis,  and  some  Mantchous,  the 
Ossetes  in  the  Caucasus,  the  Siahposh,  the  Eohillas, 
are  at  the  present  day  fair,  yellow  or  red  haired, 
and  blue-eyed;  and  the  interpolation  of  tribes  of 
Mongolian  hair  and  complexion,  as  far  west  as  the 
Caspian  Steppes  and  the  Crimea,  might  justly  be 
accounted  for  by  those  subsequent  westward  irrup- 
tions of  the  Mongolian  stock,  of  which  history  fur- 
nishes abundant  testimony.  The  furthermost 
limit  of  the  Xanthochroi  north-westward  is  Ice- 
land and  the  British  Isles;  south-westward,  they 
are  traceable  at  intervals  through  Syria  and  the 
Berber  country,  ending  in  the  Canary  Islands. 
The  cranial  characters  of  the  Xanthochroi  are  not, 
at  present,  strictly  definable.  The  Scandinavians 
are  certainly  long-headed;  but  many  Germans,  the 
Swiss  so  far  as  they  are  Germanized,  the  Slavonians, 
the  Fins,  and  the  Turks,  are  short-headed.  What 
were  the  cranial  characters  of  the  ancient  "  U- 
suns  "  and  "  Ting-lings  "  of  the  valley  of  the  Yeni- 
sei is  unknown. 

West  and  south  of  the  area  occupied  by  the 
chief  mass  of  the  Xanthochroi,  and  north  of  the 


I 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    233 

Sahara,  is  a  broad  belt  of  land,  shaped  like  a 
^.  Between  the  forks  of  the  Y  lies  the 
Mediterranean;  the  stem  of  it  is  Arabia.  The 
stem  is  bathed  by  the  Indian  Ocean,  the  west- 
em  ends  of  the  forks  by  the  Atlantic.  The  ma- 
jority of  the  people  inhabiting  the  area  thus 
roughly  defined  have,  like  the  Xanthochroi,  promi- 
nent noses,  pale  skins  and  wavy  hair,  with  abun- 
dant beards;  but,  unlike  them,  the  hair  is  black 
or  dark  and  the  eyes  usually  so.  They  may 
thence  be  called  the  Melanochroi.  Such  people 
are  found  in  the  British  Islands,  in  Western  and 
Southern  Gaul,  in  Spain,  in  Italy  south  of  the  Po, 
in  parts  of  Greece,  in  Syria  and  Arabia,  stretching 
as  far  northward  and  eastward  as  the  Caucasus  and 
Persia.  They  are  the  chief  inhabitants  of  Africa 
north  of  the  Sahara,  and,  like  the  Xanthochroi, 
they  end  in  the  Canary  Islands.  They  are  known 
as  Kelts,  Iberians,  Etruscans,  Eomans,  Pelasgiaas, 
Berbers,  Semites.  The  majority  of  them  are  long- 
headed, and  of  smaller  stature  than  the  Xantho- 
chroi.* It  is  needless  to  remark  upon  the  civiliza- 
tion of  these  two  great  stocks.  With  them  has 
originated  everything  that  is  highest  in  science,  in 
art,  in  law,  in  politics,  and  in  mechanical  inven- 
tions. In  their  hands,  at  the  present  moment,  lies 
the  order  of  the  social  world,  and  to  them  its  pro- 
gress is  committed. 

[*  See  the  Essay  on  the  Aryan  Question,  in  this  vol- 
ume, for  some  qualifications  of  these  statements  neces- 
sitated by  further  knowledge. — 1894.] 


234    METHODS  AND  RiESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

South  of  the  Atlas,  and  of  the  Great  Desert, 
Middle  Africa  exhibits  a  new  type  of  humanity  in 
the  Negeo,  with  his  dark  skin,  woolly  hair,  pro- 
jecting jaws,  and  thick  lips.  As  a  rule,  the  skull 
of  the  Negro  is  remarkably  long;  it  rarely  ap- 
proaches the  broad  type,  and  never  exhibits  the 
roundness  of  the  Mongolian.  A  cultivator  of  the 
ground,  and  dwelling  in  villages;  a  maker  of  pot- 
tery, and  a  worker  in  the  useful  as  well  as  the 
ornamental  metals;  employing  the  bow  and  arrow 
as  well  as  the  spear,  the  typical  negro  stands  high  in 
point  of  civilization  above  the  Australian. 

Eesembling  the  Negroes  in  cranial  characters, 
the  Bushmen  of  South  Africa  differ  from  them  in 
their  yellowish  brown  skins,  their  tufted  hair,  their 
remarkably  small  stature,  and  their  tendency  to 
fatty  and  other  integumentary  outgrowths;  nor  is 
the  wonderful  click  with  which  their  speech  is  in- 
terspersed to  be  overlooked  in  enumerating  the 
physical  characteristics  of  this  strange  people. 

The  so-called  "  Dravidian "  populations  of 
Southern  Hindostan  lead  us  back,  physically  as 
well  as  geographically,  towards  the  Australians;  * 

[*  Of  the  affinities  of  these  stocks  I  think  there  can 
be  no  doubt.  I  was  formerly  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
ancient  Egyptian  was  the  highest  term  in  an  ascending 
series:  Australian — Dravidian— Egyptian  of  allied  stocks. 
And  I  believe  still  that  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for 
that  hypothesis.  One  of  the  most  interesting  problems  at 
present  is  the  relation  of  the  pra^semitic  population  of 
Babylonia  to  the  Dravidians,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
Old  "Egyptian  on  the  other.  Only  one  point  appears  to  me 
to  be  quite  clear,  if  the  statues  of  Tell  Loh  represent  these 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.   235 

while  the  diminutive  Mincopies  of  the  Andaman 
Islands  lie  midway  between  the  Negro  and  Ne- 
grito races,  and,  as  Mr.  Busk  has  pointed  out,  occa- 
sionally present  the  rare  combination  of  brachy- 
cephaly,  or  short-headedness,  with  woolly  hair. 

In  the  preceding  progress  along  the  outskirts 
of  the  habitable  world,  eleven  readily  distinguish- 
able stocks,  or  persistent  modifications,  of  mankind, 
have  been  recognized.  I  have  purposely  omitted 
such  people  as  the  Abyssinians  and  the  Hindoos 
of  the  valleys  of  the  Ganges  and  Indus,  who  there 
is  every  reason  to  believe  result  from  the  intermix- 
ture of  distinct  stocks.  Perhaps  I  ought  for  like 
reasons,  to  have  ignored  the  Mincopies.  But  I 
do  not  pretend  that  my  enumeration  is  complete 
or,  in  any  sense,  perfect.  It  is  enough  for  my  pur- 
pose if  it  be  admitted  (and  I  think  it  cannot  be 
denied)  that  those  which  I  have  mentioned  exist, 
are  well  marked,  and  occupy  the  greater  part  of  the 
habitable  globe. 

In  attempting  to  classify  these  persistent  modi- 
fications after  the  manner  of  naturalists,  the  first 
circumstance  that  attracts  one's  attention  is  the 
broad  contrast  between  the  people  with  straight 
and  wavy  hair,  and  those  with  crisp,  woolly,  or 
tufted  hair.  Bory  de  St.  Vincent,  noting  this 
fundamental  distinction,  divided  mankind  accord- 
people;  that  there  is  not  a  trace  of  Mongolian  affinity 
about  them.— 1894.] 


236    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

ingly  into  the  two  primary  groups  of  Leiotrichi  and 
Ulotrichi, — terms  which  are  open  to  criticism,  but 
which  I  adopt  in  the  accompanying  table,  because 
they  have  been  used.  It  is  better  for  science  to 
accept  a  faulty  name  which  has  the  merit  of  exist- 
ence, than  to  burthen  it  with  a  faultless  newly  in- 
vented one. 

Lkiotrichi.  Ulotrichi. 


Dolichocephali.  Brachycephali.  Dolichocephali.  Brachycephali. 
Leucous. 

....  Xanthochroi  .... 
Leucomelanous. 

....  Melanochroi   .... 
Xanthomelanous. 

Esquimaux.        Mongolians.        Bushmen. 
Amphinesians. 
ATYiericans. 
Melanous. 

Australians.  Negroes.  Mincopies  (?) 

Negritos. 
***  The  nam^  of  the  stocks  knovm  only  since  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury are  put  into  italics.     If  the  "  Skrdlings"  of  the  Norse  discov- 
erers of  America  were  Esquimaux,  Europeans  became  acquainted 
with  the  latter  six  or  seven  centuries  earlier. 

Under  each  of  these  divisions  are  two  columns, 
one  for  the  Brachycephali,  or  short  heads,  and  one 
for  the  Dolichocephali,*  or  long  heads.  Again, 
each  column  is  subdivided  transversely  into  four 
compartments,  one  for  the  "  leucous,"  people  with 

*  Skulls,  the  transverse  diameter  of  which  is  more  than 
eight-tenths  the  long  diameter,  are  short;  those  which 
have  the  transverse  diameter  less  than  eight-tenths  the 
longitudinal,  are  long. 


METHODS  AKD  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    237 

fair  complexions  and  yellow  or  red  hair;  one  for 
the  "  leucomelanous/'  with  dark  hair  and  pale 
skins;  one  for  the  "  xanthomelanous,"  with  black 
hair  and  yellow,  brown,  or  olive  skins;  and  one  for 
the  "  melanous/'  with  black  hair  and  dark  brown 
or  blackish  skins. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  that  almost  all  the 
woolly-haired  people  are  also  long-headed;  while 
among  the  straight-haired  nations  broad  heads  pre- 
ponderate, and  only  two  stocks,  the  Esquimaux  and 
the  Australians,  are  exclusively  long-headed. 

One  of  the  acutest  and  most  original  of  ethnolo- 
gists, Desmoulins,  originated  the  idea,  which  has 
subsequently  been  fully  developed  by  Agassiz,  that 
the  distribution  of  the  persistent  modifications  of 
man  is  governed  by  the  same  laws  as  that  of  other 
animals,  and  that  both  fall  into  the  same  great  dis- 
tributional provinces.  Thus,  Australia,  America, 
south  of  Mexico;  the  Arctic  regions;  Europe,  Syria, 
Arabia,  and  North  Africa,  taken  together,  are  each 
regions  eminently  characterised  by  the  nature  of 
their  animal  and  vegetable  populations,  and  each, 
as  we  have  seen,  has  its  peculiar  and  characteristic 
form  of  man.  But  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the 
parallel  thus  drawn  will  hold  good  strictly,  and  in 
all  cases.  The  Tasmanian  Fauna  and  Flora  are  es- 
sentially Australian,  and  the  like  is  true,  to  a  less 
extent,  of  many,  if  not  of  all,  the  Papuan  islands; 
but  the  Negritos  who  inhabit  these  islands  are 
strikingly  different  from  the  Australians.     Again, 


238    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OP  ETHNOLOGY. 

the  differences  between  the  Mongolians  and  the 
Xanthochroi  are  out  of  all  proportion  greater  than 
those  between  the  Faunae  and  Florae  of  Central 
and  Eastern  Asia.  But  whatever  the  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  the  detailed  application  of  this  com- 
parison of  the  distribution  of  men  with  that  of 
animals,  it  is  well  worthy  of  being  borne  in  mind, 
and  carried  as  far  as  it  will  go. 

Apart  from  all  speculation,  a  very  curious  fact 
regarding  the  distribution  of  the  persistent  modi- 
fications of  mankind  becomes  apparent  on  inspect- 
ing an  Ethnological  chart,  projected  in  such  a 
manner  that  the  Pacific  Ocean  occupies  its  centre. 
Such  a  chart  exhibits  an  Australian  area  occupied 
by  dark  smooth-haired  people,  separated  by  an  in- 
complete inner  zone  of  dark  woolly-haired  Negritos 
and  Negroes,  from  an  outer  zone  of  comparatively 
pale  and  smooth-haired  men,  occupying  the  Amer- 
icas, and  nearly  all  Asia  *  and  North  Africa,  f 

Such  is  a  brief  sketch  of  the  characters  and  dis- 
tribution of  the  persistent  modifications,  or  stocks, 
of  mankind  at  the  present  day.  If  we  seek  for 
direct  evidence  of  how  long  this  state  of  things  has 
lasted,  we  shall  find  little  enough,  and  that  little 
far  from  satisfactory.  Of  the  eleven  different 
stocks  enumerated,  seven  have  been  known  to  us 
for  less  than  400  years;  and  of  these  seven  not  one 

I"*  Hindostan  excepted. — 1894.] 
[t  Egypt  excepted.— 1894.] 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    239 

possessed  a  fragment  of  written  history  at  the  time 
it  came  into  contact  with  European  civilization. 
The  other  four — the  Negroes,  Mongolians, 
Xanthochroi,  and  Melanochroi — have  always  ex- 
isted in  some  of  the  localities  in  which  they  are  now 
found,  nor  do  the  negroes  ever  seem  to  have  volun- 
tarily travelled  beyond  the  limits  of  their  present 
area.  But  ancient  history  is  in  a  great  measure 
the  record  of  the  mutual  encroachments  of  the 
other  three  stocks. 

On  the  whole,  however,  it  is  wonderful  how 
little  change  has  been  effected  by  these  mutual 
invasions  and  intermixtures.  As  at  the  present 
time,  so  at  the  dawn  of  history,  the  Melanochroi 
fringed  the  Atlantic  and  the  Mediterranean;  the 
Xanthochroi  occupied  most  of  Central  and 
Eastern  Europe,  and  much  of  Western  and  Cen- 
tral Asia;  while  Mongolians  held  the  extreme 
east  of  the  Old  World.  So  far  as  history  teaches 
us,  the  populations  of  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa 
were,  twenty  *  centuries  ago,  just  what  they 
are  now,  in  their  broad  features  and  general  dis- 
tribution. 

The  evidence  yielded  by  Archaeology  is  not 
very  definite,  but  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  is  to  much 
the  same  effect.  The  mound  builders  of  Central 
America  seem  to  have  had  the  characteristic  short 
and  broad  head  of  the  modern  inhabitants  of  that 
continent.     The   tumuli   and  tombs   of   Ancient 

[*  We  may  now  safely  say  thirty  or  forty. — 1894.] 


240    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

Scandinavia,  of  pre-Eoman  Britain,  of  Gaul,  of 
Switzerland,  reveal  two  types  of  skull — a  broad 
and  a  long — of  which,  in  Scandinavia,  the  broad 
seems  to  have  belonged  to  the  older  stock,  while 
the  reverse  was  probably  the  case  in  Britain,  and 
certainly  in  Switzerland.  It  has  been  assumed 
that  the  broad-skulled  people  of  ancient  Scandi- 
navia were  Lapps;  but  there  is  no  proof  of  the 
fact,  and  they  may  have  been,  like  the  broad- 
skulled  Swiss  and  Germans,  Xanthochroi.  One  of 
the  greatest  of  ethnological  difficulties  is  to  know 
where  the  modern  Swedes,  Norsemen,  and  Saxons 
got  their  long  heads,  as  all  their  neighbours,  Fins, 
Lapps,  Slavonians,  and  South  Germans,  are  broad- 
headed.  Again,  who  were  the  small-handed  *  long- 
headed people  of  the  "  bronze  epoch,"  and  what 
has  become  of  the  infusion  of  their  blood  among 
the  Xanthochroi? 

At  present  Palaeontology  yields  no  safe  data  to 
the  ethnologist.  We  know  absolutely  nothing  of 
the  ethnological  characters  of  the  men  of  Abbe- 
ville and  Hoxne;  but  must  be  content  with  the 
demonstration,  in  itself  of  immense  value,  that 
Man  existed  in  Western  Europe  when  its  physical 
condition  was  widely  different  from  what  it  is  now, 
and  when  animals  existed,  which,  though  they 

[*  Supposed  to  be  small-handed  from  the  small  handles 
of  their  bronze  swords.  But  I  observe  in  the  Assyrian 
sculptures  the  same  small  handles,  while  the  hands  are  by 
no  means  small.  How  did  the  Assyrians  use  their  swords? 
So  far  as  I  know  thrusting  alone  is  represented. — 1894.] 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    241 

belong  to  what  is,  properly  speaking,  the  present 
order  of  things,  have  long  been  extinct.  Beyond 
the  limits  of  a  fraction  of  Europe,  Palaeontology 
tells  us  nothing  of  man  or  of  his  works. 

To  sum  up  our  knowledge  of  the  ethnological 
past  of  man;  so  far  as  the  light  is  bright,  it  shows 
him  substantially  as  he  is  now;  and,  when  it  grows 
dim,  it  permits  us  to  see  no  sign  that  he  was  other 
than  he  is  now. 

It  is  a  general  belief  that  men  of  different  stocks 
differ  as  much  physiologically  as  they  do  morpho- 
logically; but  it  is  very  hard  to  prove,  in  any  par- 
ticular case,  how  much  of  a  supposed  national  char- 
acteristic is  due  to  inherent  physiological  peculiari- 
ties, and  how  much  to  the  influence  of  circum- 
stances. There  is  much  evidence  to  show,  how- 
ever, that  some  stocks  enjoy  a  partial  or  complete 
immunity  from  diseases  which  destroy,  or  decimate, 
others.  Thus  there  seems  good  ground  for  the 
belief  that  Negroes  are  remarkably  exempt  from 
yellow  fever;  and  that,  among  Europeans,  the 
melanochroic  people  are  less  obnoxious  to  its  rav- 
ages than  the  xanthochroic.  But  many  writers, 
not  content  with  physiological  differences  of  this 
kind,  undertake  to  prove  the  existence  of  others  of 
far  greater  moment;  and,  indeed,  to  show  that  cer- 
tain stocks  of  mankind  exhibit,  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctly, the  physiological  characters  of  true  species. 
Unions  between  these  stocks,  and  still  more  be- 
tween the  half-breeds  arising  from  their  mixture, 
180 


242    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

are  affirmed  to  be  either  infertile,  or  less  fertile 
than  those  which  take  place  between  males  and  fe- 
males of  either  stock  under  the  same  circum- 
stances. Some  go  so  far  as  to  assert  that  no  mixed 
breeds  of  mankind  can  maintain  themselves  with- 
out the  assistance  of  one  or  other  of  the  parent 
stocks,  and  that,  consequently,  they  must  inevit- 
ably be  obHterated  in  the  long  run. 

Here,  again,  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  obtain 
trustworthy  evidence  and  to  free  the  effects  of  the 
pure  physiological  experiment  from  adventitious 
influences.  The  only  trial  which,  by  a  strange 
chance,  was  kept  clear  of  all  such  influences — the 
only  instance  in  which  two  distinct  stocks  of  man- 
kind were  crossed,  and  their  progeny  intermarried 
without  any  admixture  from  without — is  the  fa- 
mous case  of  the  Pitcairn  Islanders,  who  were  the 
progeny  of  Bligh's  English  sailors  by  Tahitian 
women.  The  results  of  this  experiment,  as  every- 
body knows,  are  dead  against  those  who  maintain 
the  doctrine  of  human  hybridity,  seeing  that  the 
Pitcairn  Islanders,  even  though  they  necessarily 
contracted  consanguineous  marriages,  throve  and 
multiplied  exceedingly. 

But  those  who  are  disposed  to  believe  in  this 
doctrine  should  study  the  evidence  brought  forward 
in  its  support  by  M.  Broca,  its  latest  and  ablest 
advocate,  and  compare  this  evidence  with  that 
which  the  botanists,  as  represented  by  a  Gaertner 
or  by  a  Darwin,  think  it  indispensable  to  obtain 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OP  ETHNOLOGY.    243 

before  they  will  admit  the  infertility  of  crosses 
between  two  allied  kinds  of  plants.  They  will 
then,  I  think,  be  satisfied  that  the  doctrine  in  ques- 
tion rests  upon  a  very  unsafe  foundation;  that 
the  facts  adduced  in  its  support  are  capable  of 
many  other  interpretations;  and,  indeed,  that  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case,  demonstrative  evidence 
one  way  or  the  other  is  almost  unattainable. 
A  priori,  I  should  be  disposed  to  expect  a  certain 
amount  of  infertility  between  some  of  the  extreme 
modifications  of  mankind;  and  still  more  between 
the  offsprings  of  their  intermixture.  A  posteriori, 
I  cannot  discover  any  satisfactory  proof  that  such 
infertility  exists. 

From  the  facts  of  ethnology  I  now  turn  to  the 
theories  and  speculations  of  ethnologists,  which 
have  been  devised  to  explain  these  facts,  and  to 
furnish  satisfactory  answers  to  the  inquiry — what 
conditions  have  determined  the  existence  of  the 
persistent  modifications  of  mankind,  and  have 
caused  their  distribution  to  be  what  it  is? 

These  speculations  may  be  grouped  under  three 
heads:  firstly,  the  Monogenist  hypotheses;  second- 
ly, those  of  the  Polygenists;  and  thirdly,  that  which 
would  result  from  a  simple  application  of  Darwin- 
ian principles  to  mankind. 

According  to  the  Monogenists,  all  mankind 
have  sprung  from  a  single  pair,  whose  multitudi- 
nous progeny  spread  themselves  over  the  world, 
such  as  it  now  is,  and  became  modified  into  the 


244    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

forms  we  meet  with  in  the  various  regions  of  the 
earth,  by  the  effect  of  the  climatal  and  other  condi- 
tions to  which  they  were  subjected. 

The  advocates  of  this  hypothesis  are  divisible 
into  several  schools.  There  are  those  who  repre- 
sent the  most  numerous,  respectable,  and  would-be 
orthodox  of  the  public,  and  are  what  may  be  called 
''  Adamites,"  pure  and  simple.  They  believe  that 
Adam  was  made  out  of  earth  somewhere  in  Asia, 
about  six  thousand  years  ago;  that  Eve  was 
modelled  from  one  of  his  ribs;  and  that  the  progeny 
of  these  two  having  been  reduced  to  the  eight  per- 
sons who  were  landed  on  the  summit  of  Mount 
Ararat  after  an  universal  deluge,  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth  have  proceeded  from  these  last,  have 
migrated  to  their  present  localities,  and  have  be- 
come converted  into  Negroes,  Australians,  Mongo- 
lians, &c.,  within  that  time.  Five-sixths  of  the 
public  are  taught  this  Adamitic  Monogenism,  as 
if  it  were  an  established  truth,  and  believe  it.  I 
do  not;  and  I  am  not  acquainted  with  any  man  of 
science,  or  duly  instructed  person,  who  does. 

A  second  school  of  monogenists,  not  worthy  of 
much  attention,  attempts  to  hold  a  place  midway 
between  the  Adamites  and  a  third  division,  who 
take  up  a  purely  scientific  position,  and  require  to 
be  dealt  with  accordingly.  This  third  division,  in 
fact,  numbers  in  its  ranks  Linnaeus,  Buffon, 
Blumenbach,  Cuvier,  Prichard,  and  many  distin- 
guished living  ethnologists. 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    245 

These  "  Eational  Monogenists,"  or,  at  any  rate, 
the  more  modern  among  them,  hold,  firstly,  that 
the  present  condition  of  the  earth  has  existed  for 
untold  ages;  secondly,  that,  at  a  remote  period,  be- 
yond the  ken  of  Archbishop  Usher,  man  was  cre- 
ated, somewhere  between  the  Caucasus  and  the 
Hindoo  Koosh;  thirdly,  that  he  might  have  mi- 
grated thence  to  all  parts  of  the  inhabited  world, 
seeing  that  none  of  them  are  unattainable  from 
some  other  inhabited  part,  by  men  provided  with 
only  such  means  of  transport  as  savages  are  known 
to  possess  and  must  have  invented;  fourthly,  that 
the  operation  of  the  existing  diversities  of  climate 
and  other  conditions  upon  people  so  migrating,  is 
sufficient  to  account  for  all  the  diversities  of  man- 
kind. 

Of  the  truth  of  the  first  of  these  propositions 
no  competent  judge  now  entertains  any  doubt. 
The  second  is  more  open  to  discussion;  for,  in  these 
latter  days,  many  question  the  special  creation  of 
man:  and  even  if  his  special  creation  be  granted, 
there  is  not  a  shadow  of  a  reason  why  he  should 
have  been  created  in  Asia  rather  than  anywhere 
else.  Of  all  the  odd  myths  that  have  arisen  in 
the  scientific  world,  the  "  Caucasian  mystery,"  in- 
vented quite  innocently  by  Blumenbach,  is  the 
oddest.  A  Georgian  woman's  skull  was  the 
handsomest  in  his  collection.  Hence  it  became 
his  model  exemplar  of  human  skulls,  from  which 
all  others  might  be  regarded  as  deviations;  and 


246    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

out  of  this,  by  some  strange  intellectual  hocus- 
pocus,  grew  up  the  notion  that  the  Caucasian  man 
is  the  prototypic  "  Adamic  "  man,  and  his  coun- 
try the  primitive  centre  of  our  kind.  Perhaps 
the  most  curious  thing  of  all  is,  that  the  said 
Georgian  skull,  after  all,  is  not  a  skull  of  average 
form,  but  distinctly  belongs  to  the  brachycephalic 
group. 

With  the  third  proposition  I  am  quite  disposed 
to  agree,  though  it  must  be  recollected  that  it  is 
one  thing  to  allow  that  a  given  migration  is 
possible,  and  another  to  admit  there  is  good 
reason  to  believe  it  has  really  taken  place. 

But  I  can  find  no  sufficient  ground  for  accept- 
ing the  fourth  proposition;  and  I  doubt  if  it  would 
ever  have  obtained  its  general  currency  except  for 
the  circumstance  that  fair  Europeans  are  very 
readily  tanned  and  embrowned  by  the  sun.  Yet 
I  am  not  aware  that  there  is  a  particle  of  proof  that 
the  cutaneous  change  thus  effected  can  become 
hereditary,  any  more  than  that  the  enlarged  livers, 
which  plague  our  countrymen  in  India,  can  be 
transmitted;  while  there  is  very  strong  evidence 
to  the  contrary.  Not  only,  in  fact,  are  there  such 
cases  as  those  of  the  English  families  in  Barbadoes, 
who  have  remained  for  six  generations  unaltered 
in  complexion,  but  which  are  open  to  the  objection 
that  they  may  have  received  infusions  of  fresh  Eu- 
ropean blood;  but  there  is  the  broad  fact,  that  not 
a  single  indigenous  Negro  exists  either  in  the  great 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OP  ETHNOLOGY.    247 

alluvial  plains  of  tropical  South  America,  or  in  the 
exposed  islands  of  the  Polynesian  Archipelago,  or 
among  the  populations  of  equatorial  Borneo  or 
Sumatra.  No  satisfactory  explanation  of  these 
obvious  difficulties  has  been  offered  by  the  ad- 
vocates of  the  direct  influence  of  conditions.  And 
as  for  the  more  important  modifications  observed 
in  the  structure  of  the  brain,  and  in  the  form  of  the 
skull,  no  one  has  ever  pretended  to  show  in  what 
way  they  can  be  effected  directly  by  climate. 

It  is  here,  in  fact,  that  the  strength  of  the  Poly- 
genists,  or  those  who  maintain  that  men  primi- 
tively arose,  not  from  one,  but  from  many  stocks, 
lies.  Show  us,  they  say  to  the  Monogenists,  a 
single  case  in  which  the  characters  of  a  human 
stock  have  been  essentially  modified  without  its 
being  demonstrable,  or,  at  least,  highly  probable, 
that  there  has  been  intermixture  of  blood  with 
some  foreign  stock.  Bring  fonv^ard  any  instance 
in  which  a  part  of  the  world,  formerly  inhabited 
by  one  stock,  is  now  the  dwelling-place  of  another, 
and  we  will  prove  the  change  to  be  the  result  of 
migration,  or  of  intermixture,  and  not  of  modifica- 
tion of  character  by  climatic  influences.  Finally, 
prove  to  us  that  the  evidence  in  favour  of  the  spe- 
cific distinctness  of  many  animals,  admitted  to  be 
distinct  species  by  all  zoologists,  is  a  whit  better 
than  that  upon  which  we  maintain  the  specific  dis- 
tinctness of  men. 

If  presenting  unanswerable  objections  to  your 


248    METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

adversary  were  the  same  thing  as  proving  your 
own  case,  the  Polygenists  would  be  in  a  fair  way 
towards  victory;  but,  unfortunately,  as  I  have 
already  observed,  they  have  as  yet  completely 
failed  to  adduce  satisfactory  positive  proof  of  the 
specific  diversity  of  mankind.  Like  the  Monoge- 
nists,  the  Polygenists  are  of  several  sects;  some 
imagine  that  their  assumed  species  of  mankind 
were  created  where  we  find  them — the  African  in 
Africa,  and  the  Australian  in  Australia,  along 
with  the  other  animals  of  their  distributional 
province;  others  conceive  that  each  species  of 
man  has  resulted  from  the  modification  of  some 
antecedent  species  of  ape — the  American  from  the 
broad-nosed  Simians  of  the  New  World,  the  Afri- 
can from  the  Troglodytic  stock,  the  Mongolian 
from  the  Orangs. 

The  first  hypothesis  is  hardly  likely  to  win 
much  favour.  The  whole  tendency  of  modern  sci- 
ence is  to  thrust  the  origination  of  things  further 
and  further  into  the  background;  and  the  chief 
philosophical  objection  to  Adam  being,  not  his 
oneness,  but  the  hypothesis  of  his  special  creation; 
the  multiplication  of  that  objection  tenfold  is, 
whatever  it  may  look,  an  increase,  instead  of  a 
diminution,  of  the  difficulties  of  the  case.  And,  as 
to  the  second  alternative,  it  may  safely  be  affirmed 
that,  even  if  the  differences  between  men  are  spe- 
cific, they  are  so  small,  that  the  assumption  of  more 
than  one  primitive  stock  for  all  is  altogether  super- 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.    249 

fluous.  Surely  no  one  can  now  be  found  to  assert 
that  any  two  stocks  of  mankind  differ  as  much  as  a 
chimpanzee  and  an  orang  do;  still  less  that  they  are 
as  unlike  as  either  of  these  is  to  any  New  World 
Simian! 

Lastly,  the  granting  of  the  Polygenist  premises 
does  not,  in  the  slightest  degree,  necessitate  the 
Polygenist  conclusion.  Admit  that  Negroes  and 
Australians,  Negritos  and  Mongols  are  distinct  spe- 
cies, or  distinct  genera,  if  you  will,  and  you  may 
yet,  with  perfect  consistency,  be  the  strictest  of 
Monogenists,  and  even  believe  in  Adam  and  Eve  as 
the  primaeval  parents  of  ail  mankind. 

It  is  to  Mr.  Darwin  we  owe  this  discovery:  it  is 
he  who,  coming  forward  in  the  guise  of  an  eclectic 
philosopher,  presents  his  doctrine  as  the  key  to 
ethnology,  and  as  reconciling  and  combining  all 
that  is  good  in  the  Monogenistic  and  Polygenistic 
schools.  It  is  true  that  Mr.  Darwin  has  not,  in  so 
many  words,  applied  his  views  to  ethnology;  but 
even  he  who  "  runs  and  reads "  the  "  Origin  of 
Species"  can  hardly  fail  to  do  so;  and,  further- 
more, Mr.  Wallace  and  M.  Pouchet  have  recently 
treated  of  ethnological  questions  from  this  point 
of  view.  Let  me,  in  conclusion,  add  my  own  con- 
tribution to  the  same  store. 

I  assume  Man  to  have  arisen  in  the  manner 
which  I  have  discussed  elsewhere,  and  probably, 
though  by  no  means  necessarily,  in  one  locality. 
Whether  he  arose  singly,  or  a  number  of  examples 


250   METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

appeared  contemporaneously,  is  also  an  open  ques- 
tion for  the  believer  in  the  production  of  species 
by  the  gradual  modification  of  pre-existing  ones. 
At  what  epoch  of  the  world's  history  this  took 
place,  again,  we  have  no  evidence  whatever.  It 
may  have  been  in  the  older  tertiary,  or  earlier; 
but  what  is  most  important  to  remember  is,  that 
the  discoveries  of  late  years  have  proved  that  man 
inhabited  Western  Europe,  at  any  rate,  before  the 
occurrence  of  those  great  physical  changes  which 
have  given  Europe  its  present  aspect.  And  as 
the  same  evidence  shows  that  man  was  the  con- 
temporary of  animals  which  are  now  extinct,  it 
is  not  too  much  to  assume  that  his  existence 
dates  back  at  least  as  far  as  that  of  our  present 
Fauna  and  Flora,  or  before  the  epoch  of  the 
drift. 

But  if  this  be  true,  it  is  somewhat  startling  to 
reflect  upon  the  prodigious  changes  which  have 
taken  place  in  the  physical  geography  of  this 
planet  since  man  has  been  an  occupant  of  it. 

During  that  period  the  greater  part  of  the 
British  islands,  of  Central  Europe,  of  Northern 
Asia,  have  been  submerged  beneath  the  sea  and 
raised  up  again.  So  has  the  great  desert  of  Sahara, 
which  occupies  the  major  part  of  Northern  Africa.* 
The  Caspian  and  the  Aral  seas  have  been  one,  and 
their  united  waters  have  probably  communicated 

[•  Later  investigations  tend  to  show  that  only  a  small 
part  of  the  Sahara  has  been  submerged. — 1894.] 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  251 

with  both  the  Arctic  and  the  Mediterranean 
oceans.*  The  greater  part  of  North  America  haa 
been  under  water,  and  has  emerged.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  a  large  part  of  the  Malayan  Archi- 
pelago has  sunk,  and  that  its  primitive  continuity 
with  Asia  has  been  destroyed.  Over  the  great 
Polynesian  area  subsidence  has  taken  place  to  the 
extent  of  many  thousands  of  feet — subsidence  of 
so  vast  a  character,  in  fact,  that  if  a  continent  like 
Asia  had  once  occupied  the  area  of  the  Pacific,  the 
peaks  of  its  mountains  would  now  show  not  more 
numerous  than  the  islands  of  the  Polynesian  Archi- 
pelagof 

What  lands  may  have  been  thickly  populated 
for  untold  ages,  and  subsequently  have  disappeared 
and  left  no  sign  above  the  waters,  it  is  of  course 
impossible  for  us  to  say;  but  unless  we  are  to  make 
the  wholly  unjustifiable  assumption  that  no  dry 
land  rose  elsewhere  when  our  present  dry  land  sank, 
there  must  be  half-a-dozen  Atlantises  beneath  the 
waves  of  the  various  oceans  of  the  world.  But  if 
the  regions  which  have  undergone  these  slow  and 
gradual,  but  immense  alterations,  were  wholly  or 
in  part  inhabited  before  the  changes  I  have  indi- 
cated began — and  it  is  more  probable  that  they 

['  With  reference  to  certain  reclamations  that  have 
been  made  d  prupos  of  a  speculation  set  forth  in  the  essay 
on  the  Aryan  Question  (infrd),  I  draw  attention  to  the 
fact  that  this  passage  was  written  twenty-nine  years  ago. 
—1894.] 

[t  The  occurrence  of  this  extensive  subsidence  is  dis- 
puted.—1894.  J 


252  METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY. 

were  than  that  they  were  not — what  a  wonderfully 
efficient  "  Emigration  Board  "  must  have  been  at 
work  all  over  the  world  long  before  canoes,  or  even 
rafts,  were  invented;  and  before  men  were  impelled 
to  wander  by  any  desire  nobler  or  stronger  than 
hunger.  And  as  these  rude  and  primitive  families 
were  thrust,  in  the  course  of  long  series  of  genera- 
tions, from  land  to  land,  impelled  by  encroach- 
ments of  sea  or  of  marsh,  or  by  severity  of  summer 
heat  or  winter  cold,  to  change  their  positions,  what 
opportunities  must  have  been  offered  for  the  play 
of  natural  selection,  in  preserving  one  family  varia- 
tion and  destroying  another! 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  some  families  of  a 
horde  which  had  reached  a  land  charged  with  the 
seeds  of  yellow  fever,  varied  in  the  direction  of 
woolliness  of  hair  and  darkness  of  skin.  Then,  if 
it  be  true  that  these  physical  characters  are  accom- 
panied by  comparative  or  absolute  exemptions 
from  that  scourge,  the  inevitable  tendency  would 
be  to  the  preservation  and  multiplication  of  the 
darker  and  woollier  families,  and  the  elimination  of 
the  whiter  and  smoother  haired.  In  fact,  by  the 
operation  of  causes  precisely  similar  to  those  which, 
in  the  famous  instance  cited  by  Mr.  Darwin,  have 
given  rise  to  a  race  of  black  pigs  in  the  forests  of 
Louisiana,  a  negro  stock  would  eventually  people 
the  region.*     Again,  how  often,  by  such  physical 

[*  Mr.  Pearson,  in  his  very  interesting  work  On  Na- 
tional Life  and  Character,  justly  dwells  upon  the  ob- 


METHODS  AND  RESULTS  OF  ETHNOLOGY.  253 

changes,  must  a  stock  have  been  isolated  from  all 
others  for  innumerable  generations,  and  have 
found  ample  time  for  the  hereditary  hardening  of 
its  special  peculiarities  into  the  enduring  charac- 
ters of  a  persistent  modification. 

Nor,  if  it  be  true  that  the  physiological  differ- 
ences of  species  may  be  produced  by  variation  and 
natural  selection,  as  Mr.  Darwin  supposes,  would  it 
be  at  all  astonishing,  if,  in  some  of  these  separated 
stocks,  the  process  of  differentiation  should  have 
gone  so  far  as  to  give  rise  to  the  phenomena  of 
hybridity.  In  the  face  of  the  overwhelming 
evidence  in  favour  of  the  unity  of  the  origin  of 
mankind  afforded  by  anatomical  considerations, 
satisfactory  proof  of  the  existence  of  any  degree  of 
sterility  in  the  unions  of  members  of  two  of  the 
"  persistent  modifications  "  of  mankind,  might  well 
be  appealed  to  by  Mr.  Darwin  as  crucial  evidence 
of  the  truth  of  his  views  regarding  the  origin  of 
species  in  general. 

stacles  to  the  existence  of  the  white  races  within  the 
Tropics.  There  is,  however,  this  point  to  be  considered, 
that  the  fevers  to  which  the  white  men  succumb  are 
probably  caused  by  microbes;  and  that  modern  thera- 
peutic science  is  daily  teaching  us  more  and  more  about 
the  ways  of  obtaining  immunity  from  or  alleviating  these 
attacks.  What  would  become  of  black  competition  if 
fever  "vaccination"  proved  effectual? — 1894.] 


V. 


ON  SOME  FIXED   POINTS  IN  BRITISH 
ETHNOLOGY. 

[1871.] 

In  view  of  the  many  discussions  to  which,  the 
complicated  problems  offered  by  the  ethnology  of 
the  British  Islands  have  given  rise,  it  may  be  use- 
ful to  attempt  to  pick  out,  from  amidst  the  con- 
fused masses  of  assertion  and  of  inference,  those 
propositions  which  appear  to  rest  upon  a  secure 
foundation,  and  to  state  the  evidence  by  which 
they  are  supported.  Such  is  the  purpose  of  the 
present  paper. 

Some  of  these  well-based  propositions  relate  to 
the  physical  characters  of  the  people  of  Britain 
and  their  neighbours;  while  others  concern  the 
languages  which  they  spoke.  I  shall  deal,  in  the 
first  place,  with  the  physical  questions. 

I.  Eighteen  hundred  years  ago  the  population 
of  Britain  comprised  people  of  two  types  of  com- 
plexion— the  one  fair,  and  the  other  dark.  The 
9&i 


▼  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  255 

dark  people  resembled  the  Aquitani  and  the  Iberi- 
ans; the  fair  people  were  like  the  Belgic  Gauls. 

The  chief  direct  evidence  of  the  truth  of  this 
proposition  is  the  well-known  passage  of  Tacitus: — 

"  Ceterum  Britanniam  qui  mortales  initio  coluerint, 
indigenee  an  advecti,  ut  inter  barbaros,  parum  compertum. 
Uabitua  corporum  varii :  atque  ex  eo  argumenta :  namque 
rutilsB  Caledoniam  habitantium  comae,  magni  artua,  Ger- 
manicam  originem  asseverant.  Silurum  eoiorati  vultus 
et  torti  plerumque  crines,  et  posita  contra  Hispania, 
Iberoa  veterea  trajeciase,  eaaque  sedea  occupaase,  lidem 
faciunt.  Proximi  Gallia  et  aimilea  sunt;  seu  durante 
originia  vi,  seu  procurrentibua  in  diveraa  tenia,  poaitio 
coeli  corporibua  habitura  dedit.  In  univeraum  tamen  aeati- 
manti,  Gallos  vicinum  aolum  occupaaae,  credibile  eat; 
eorum  sacra  deprehendaa,  auperatitionum  persuasione; 
sermo  baud  multum  diveraus."  * 

This  passage,  it  will  be  observed,  contains  state- 
ments as  to  facts,  and  certain  conclusions  deduced 
from  these  facts.  The  matters  of  fact  asserted  are: 
firstly,  that  the  inhabitants  of  Britain  exhibit 
much  diversity  in  their  physical  characters;  sec- 
ondly, that  the  Caledonians  are  red-haired  and 
large-limbed,  like  the  Germans;  thirdly,  that  the 
Silures  have  curly  hair  and  dark  complexions,  like 
the  people  of  Spain;  fourthly,  that  the  British  peo- 
ple nearest  Gaul  resemble  the  "  Galli." 

Tacitus,  therefore,  states  positively  what  the 
Caledonians  and  Silures  were  like;  but  the  inter- 
pretation of  what  he  says  about  the  other  Britons 

•  Tacitus  Agricola,  c.  11. 


256  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  v 

must  depend  upon  what  we  learn  from  other 
sources  as  to  the  characters  of  these  "  Galh."  Here 
the  testimony  of  "  divus  J  uhus  "  comes  in  with 
great  force  and  appropriateness.    Caesar  writes: — 

"  Britannise  pars  interior  ab  iis  incolitur,  quos  natos  in 
insula  ipsi  uiemoria  proditum  dicunt:  marituma  pars  ab 
iis,  qui  prsedse  ac  belli  inferendi  causa  ex  Belgio  transie- 
rant;  qui  oinnes  fere  iis  nominibus  civitatum  appellantur 
quibus  orti  ex  civitatibus  eo  pervenerunt,  et  bello  inlato 
ibi  permanserunt  atque  agros  colere  cceperunt."  * 

From  these  passages  it  is  obvious  that,  in  the 
opinion  of  Csesar  and  Tacitus,  the  southern  Britons 
resembled  the  northern  Gauls,  and  especially  the 
Belgag;  and  the  evidence  of  Strabo  is  decisive  as 
to  the  characters  in  which  the  two  people  resem- 
bled one  another:  "  The  men  [of  Britain]  are  taller 
than  the  Kelts,  with  hair  less  yellow;  they  are 
slighter  in  their  persons."  f 

The  evidence  adduced  appears  to  leave  no  rea- 
sonable ground  for  doubting  that,  at  the  time  of 
the  Eoman  conquest,  Britain  contained  people  of 
two  types,  the  one  dark  and  the  other  fair  com- 
plexioned,  and  that  there  was  a  certain  difference 
between  the  latter  in  the  north  and  in  the  south 
of  Britain:  the  northern  folk  being,  in  the  judg- 
ment of  Tacitus,  or,  more  properly,  according  to 
the  information  he  had  received  from  Agricola  and 
others,  more  similar  to  the  Germans  than  the  lat- 

♦  De  Bello  Gallico,  v.  12. 

t  The  Geography  of  Strabo.  Translated  by  Hamilton 
and  Falconer,  v.  5. 


y  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  257 

ter.  As  to  the  distribution  of  these  stocks,  all  that 
is  clear  is,  that  the  dark  people  were  predominant 
in  certain  parts  of  the  west  of  the  southern  half 
of  Britain,  while  the  fair  stock  appears  to  have 
furnished  the  chief  elements  of  the  population 
elsewhere. 

No  ancient  writer  troubled  himself  with  mea- 
suring skulls,  and  therefore  there  is  no  direct  evi- 
dence as  to  the  cranial  characters  of  the  fair  and 
the  dark  stocks.  The  indirect  evidence  is  not  very 
satisfactory.  The  tumuli  of  Britain  of  pre-Roman 
date  have  yielded  two  extremely  different  forms  of 
skull,  the  one  broad  and  the  other  long;  and  the 
same  variety  has  been  observed  in  the  skulls  of 
the  ancient  Gauls.*  The  suggestion  is  obvious 
that  the  one  form  of  skull  may  have  been  associated 
with  the  fair,  and  the  other  with  the  dark,  com- 
plexion. But  any  conclusion  of  this  kind  is  at  once 
checked  by  the  reflection  that  the  extremes  of  long 
and  short-headedness  are  to  be  met  with  amonsr 
the  fair  inhabitants  of  Germany  and  of  Scandinavia 
at  the  present  day — the  south-western  Germans 
and  the  Swiss  being  markedly  broad-headed,  while 
the  Scandinavians  are  as  predominantly  long- 
headed. 

What  the  natives  of  Ireland  were  like  at  the 
time  of  the  Roman  conquest  of  Britain,  and  for 
centuries  afterwards,  we  have  no  certain  knowl- 

•  See  Dr.  Thurman  "  On  the  Two  principal  Forms  of 
Ancient  British  and  Gaulish  Skulls." 

181 


258  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  v 

edge;  but  the  earliest  trustworthy  records  prove 
the  existence,  side  by  side  with  one  another,  of  a 
fair  and  a  dark  stock,  in  Ireland  as  in  Britain.  The 
long  form  of  skull  is  predominant  among  the  an- 
cient, as  among  modern,  Irish. 

II.  The  people  termed  Gauls,  and  those  called 
Germans,  by  the  Romans,  did  not  differ  in  any 
important  physical  character. 

The  terms  in  which  the  ancient  writers  describe 
both  Gauls  and  Germans  are  identical.  They  are 
always  tall  people,  with  massive  limbs,  fair  skins, 
fierce  blue  eyes,  and  hair  the  colour  of  which 
ranges  from  red  to  yellow.  Zeuss,  the  great 
authority  on  these  matters,  affirms  broadly  that  no 
distinction  in  bodily  feature  is  to  be  found  between 
the  Gauls,  the  Germans,  and  the  Wends,  so  far  as 
their  characters  are  recorded  bv  the  old  historians: 
and  he  proves  his  case  by  citations  from  a  cloud  of 
witnesses. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  to  show  that  the 
colour  of  the  hair  of  the  Gauls  must  have  differed 
very  much  from  that  which  obtained  among  the 
Germans,  on  the  strength  of  the  story  told  by  Sue- 
tonius (Caligula,  4),  that  Caligula  tried  to  pass  off 
Gauls  for  Germans  by  picking  out  the  tallest,  and 
making  then  "  rutilare  et  summittere  comam." 

The  Baron  de  Belloguet  remarks  upon  this  pas- 
sage: 

"  It  was  in  the  very  north  of  Gaul,  and  near  the  sea, 
that  Caligula  got  up  this  military  comedy.    And  the  fact 


T  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  259 

proves  that  the  Belgae  were  already  sensibly  different 
from  their  ancestors,  whom  Strabo  had  found  almost 
identical  with  their  brothers  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Rhine." 

But  the  fact  recorded  by  Suetonius,  if  fact  it 
be,  proves  nothing;  for  the  Germans  themselves 
were  in  the  habit  of  reddening  their  hair.  Ammi- 
anus  Marcellinus  *  tells  how,  in  the  year  3G7  a.  d., 
the  Koman  commander,  Jovinus,  surprised  a  body 
of  Alemanni  near  the  town  now  called  Charpeigne, 
in  the  valley  of  the  Moselle;  and  how  the  Roman 
soldiers,  as,  concealed  by  the  thick  wood,  they  stole 
upon  their  unsuspecting  enemies,  saw  that  some 
were  bathing  and  others  "  comas  rutilantes  ex 
more."  More  than  two  centuries  earlier  Pliny 
gives  indirect  evidence  to  the  same  effect  when  he 
says  of  soap: — 

'•  Galliarum  hoc  inventum  rutilandis  capillis  .  .  .  apud 
Germanos  majore  in  usu  viris  quam  foeniinis."  t 

Here  we  have  a  writer  who  flourished  not  very 
long  after  the  date  of  the  Caligula  story,  telling  us 
that  the  Gauls  invented  soap  for  the  purpose  of 
doing  that  which,  according  to  Suetonius,  Caligula 
forced  them  to  do.  And,  further,  the  combined 
and  independent  testimony  of  Pliny  and  Ammianus 
assures  us  that  the  Germans  were  as  much  in  the 
habit  of  reddening  their  hair  as  the  Gauls.  As 
to  Be  Belloguet's  supposition  that,  even  in  Cal- 

*  Res  Uestcc,  xxvii.  ^  Historia  Naturalis,  xxviii.  51. 


260  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  v 

ignla's  time,  the  Gauls  had  become  darker  than 
their  ancestors  were,  it  is  directly  contradicted  by 
Ammianus  Marcellinus,  who  knew  the  Gauls  well. 
"  Celsioris  staturae  et  candidi  pcene  Galli  sunt 
omnes,  et  rutili,  luminumque  torvitate  terribiles," 
is  his  description;  and  it  would  fit  the  Gauls  who 
sacked  Rome. 

III.  In  none  of  the  invasions  of  Britain  which 
have  taken  place  since  the  Roman  dominion,  has 
any  other  type  of  man  been  introduced  than  one 
or  other  of  the  two  which  existed  during  that 
dominion. 

The  North  Germans,  who  effected  what  is  com- 
monly called  the  Saxon  conquest  of  Britain,  were, 
most  assuredly,  a  fair,  yellow,  or  red-haired,  blue- 
eyed,  long-skulled  people.  So  were  the  Danes  and 
the  Norsemen  who  followed  them;  though  it  is 
very  possible  that  the  active  slave  trade  which  went 
on,  and  the  intercourse  with  Ireland,  may  have 
introduced  a  certain  admixture  of  the  dark  stock 
into  both  Denmark  and  Norway.  The  Norman 
conquest  brought  in  new  ethnological  elements,  the 
precise  value  of  which  cannot  be  estimated  with 
exactness;  but  as  to  their  quality,  there  can  be 
no  question,  inasmuch  as  even  the  wide  area  from 
which  William  drew  his  followers  could  yield  him 
nothing  but  the  fair  and  the  dark  types  of  men, 
already  present  in  Britain.  But  whether  the 
Norman  settlers,  on  the  whole,  strengthened  the 
fair  or  the  dark  element,  is  a  problem,  the  ele- 


T  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  261 

ments  of  the  solution  of  which  are  not  attain- 
able. 

I  am  unable  to  discover  any  grounds  for  believ- 
ing that  a  Lapp  element  has  ever  entered  into  the 
population  of  these  islands.  So  far  as  the  physical 
evidence  goes,  it  is  perfectly  consistent  with  the 
hypothesis  that  the  only  constituent  stocks  of  that 
population,  now,  or  at  any  other  period  about 
which  we  have  evidence,  are  the  dark  whites, 
whom  I  have  proposed  to  call  "  Melanocliroi,''  and 
the  fair  whites,  or  "  Xanthochroi." 

IV.  The  Xanthochroi  and  the  Melanochroi  of 
Britain  are,  speaking  broadly,  distributed,  at  pres- 
ent, as  they  were  in  the  time  of  Tacitus;  arid  their 
representatives  on  the  continent  of  Europe  have 
the  same  general  distribution  as  at  the  earliest 
period  of  which  we  have  any  record. 

At  the  present  day,  and  notwithstanding  the 
extensive  intermixture  effected  by  the  movements 
consequent  on  civilization  and  on  political  changes, 
there  is  a  predominance  of  dark  men  in  the  west, 
and  of  fair  men  in  the  east  and  north,  of  Britain. 
At  the  present  day,  as  from  the  earliest  times,  the 
predominant  constituents  of  the  riverain  popula- 
tion of  the  North  Sea  and  the  eastern  half  of  the 
British  Channel,  are  fair  men.  The  fair  stock  con- 
tinues in  force  through  Central  Europe,  until  it  is 
lost  in  Central  Asia.  Offshoots  of  this  stock  ex- 
tend into  Spain,  Italy,  and  Northern  India,  and 
by  way  of  Syria  and  North  Africa,  to  the  Canary 


262  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  T 

Islands.  They  were  known  in  very  early  times  to 
the  Chinese^  and  in  still  earlier  to  the  ancient 
Egyptians,  as  frontier  tribes.  The  Thraeians  were 
notorious  for  their  fair  hair  and  blue  eyes  manj 
centuries  before  our  era. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  dark  stock  predominates 
in  Southern  and  Western  France,  in  Spain,  along 
the  Ligurian  shore,  and  in  Western  and  Southern 
Italy;  in  Greece,  Asia,  Syria,  and  North  Africa; 
in  Arabia,  Persia,  Afghanistan,  and  Hindostan, 
shading  gradually,  through  all  stages  of  darkening, 
into  the  type  of  the  modern  Egyptian,  or  of  the 
wild  Hill-man  of  the  Dekkan.  Nor  is  there  any 
record  of  the  existence  of  a  different  population 
in  all  these  countries. 

The  extreme  north  of  Europe,  and  the  northern 
part  of  Western  Asia,  are  at  present  occupied  by 
a  Mongoloid  stock,  and,  in  the  absence  of  evidence 
to  the  contrary,  may  be  assumed  to  have  been  so 
peopled  from  a  very  remote  epoch.  But,  as  I  have 
said,  I  can  find  no  evidence  that  this  stock  ever 
took  part  in  peopling  Britain.  Of  the  three  great 
stocks  of  mankind  which  extend  from  the  western 
coast  of  the  great  Eurasiatic  continent  to  its  south- 
ern and  eastern  shores,  the  Mongoloids  occupy  a 
vast  triangle,  the  base  of  which  is  the  whole  of 
Eastern  Asia,  while  its  apex  lies  in  Lapland.  The 
Melanochroi,  on  the  other  hand,  may  be  repre- 
sented as  a  broad  band  stretching  from  Ireland  to 
Hindostan;  while  the  Xanthochroic  area  lies  be- 


V  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  263 

tween  the  two,  thins  out,  so  to  speak,  at  either  end, 
and  mingles,  at  its  margins,  with  both  its  neigh- 
bours. 

Such  is  a  brief  and  summary  statement  of  what 
I  believe  to  be  the  chief  facts  relating  to  the  physical 
ethnology  of  the  people  of  Britain.  The  conclu- 
sions which  I  draw  from  these  and  other  facts  are 
— (1)  That  the  Melanochroi  and  the  Xanthochroi 
are  two  separate  races  in  the  biological  sense  of 
the  word  race;  (2)  That  they  have  had  the  same 
general  distribution  as  at  present  from  the  earliest 
times  of  which  any  record  exists  on  the  continent 
of  Europe;  (3)  That  the  population  of  the  British 
Islands  is  derived  from  them,  and  from  them 
only. 

The  people  of  Europe,  however,  owe  their  na- 
tional names,  not  to  their  physical  characteristics, 
but  to  their  languages,  or  to  their  political  rela- 
tions; which,  it  is  plain,  need  not  have  the  slightest 
relation  to  these  characteristics. 

Thus,  it  is  quite  certain  that,  in  Cassar's  time, 
Gaul  was  divided  politically  into  three  nationali- 
ties— the  Belga3,  the  Celtae,  and  the  Aquitani;  and 
that  the  last  were  very  widely  different,  both  in 
language  and  in  physical  characteristics,  from  the 
two  former.  The  Belgfe  and  the  Celtae,  on  the 
other  hand,  differed  comparatively  little  either  in 
physique  or  in  language.  On  the  former  point 
there  is  the  distinct  testimony  of  Strabo;  as  to  the 
latter,  St.  Jerome  states  that  the  "  Galatians  had 


264:  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  t 

almost  the  same  language  as  the  Treviri."  Now, 
the  Galatians  were  emigrant  Volcse  Tectosages,  and 
therefore  Celtae;  while  the  Treviri  were  Belgas.* 

At  the  present  day,  the  physical  characters  of 
the  people  of  Belgic  Gaul  remain  distinct  from 
those  of  the  people  of  Aquitaine,  notwithstanding 
the  immense  changes  which  have  taken  place  since 
Cassar's  time;  but  Belgse,  Celtse,  and  Aquitani  (all 
but  a  mere  fraction  of  the  last  two,  represented 
by  the  Basques  and  the  Bretons)  are  fused  into  one 
nationality,  "  le  peuple  Frangais."  But  they  have 
adopted  the  language  of  one  set  of  invaders,  and 
the  name  of  another;  their  original  names  and  lan- 
guages having  almost  disappeared.  Suppose  that 
the  French  language  remained  as  the  sole  evidence 
of  the  existence  of  the  population  of  Gaul,  would 
the  keenest  philologer  arrive  at  any  other  conclu- 
sion than  that  this  population  was  essentially  and 
fundamentally  a  "  Latin "  race,  which  had  had 
some  communication  with  Celts  and  Teutons? 
Would  he  so  much  as  suspect  the  former  existence 
of  the  Aquitani? 

Community  of  language  testifies  to  close  con- 
tact between  the  people  who  speak  the  language, 
but  to  nothing  else;  philology  has  absolutely  noth- 
ing to  do  with  ethnology,  except  so  far  as  it  sug- 
gests the  existence  or  the  absence  of  such  contact. 
The  contrary  assumption,  that  language  is  a  test 
of  race,  has  introduced  the  utmost  confusion  into 

[*  This  proposition  is  disputed. — 1894.] 


T  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  265 

ethnological  speculation,  and  has  nowhere  worked 
greater  scientific  and  practical  mischief  than  in 
the  ethnology  of  the  British  Islands. 

What  is  known,  for  certain,  about  the  languages 
spoken  in  these  islands  and  their  afl&nities  may,  I 
believe,  be  summed  up  as  follows: — 

I.  At  the  time  of  the  Roman  conquest,  one  lan- 
guage, the  Celtic,  under  two  principal  dialectical 
divisions,  the  Cymric  and  the  Gaelic,  was  spoken 
throughout  the  British  Islands.  Cymric  was 
spolcen  in  Britain,  Gaelic  *  in  Ireland. 

If  a  language  allied  to  Basque  had  in  earlier 
times  been  spoken  in  the  British  Islands,  there  is 
no  evidence  that  any  Euskarian-speaking  people 
remained  at  the  time  of  the  Eoman  conquest.  The 
dark  and  the  fair  population  of  Britain  alike  spoke 
Celtic  tongues,  and  therefore  the  name  "  Celt  "  is 
as  applicable  to  the  one  as  to  the  other. 

What  was  spoken  in  Ireland  can  only  be  sur- 
mised by  reasoning  from  the  knowledge  of  later 
times;  but  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  it  was 
Gaelic. 

II.  The  Bclgce  and  the  Celtce,  with  the  offshoots 
of  the  latter  in  .Asia  Minor,  spoke  dialects  of  the 
Cymric  division  of  Celtic. 

The  evidence  of  this  proposition  lies  in  the 

[*  I  have  been  told  tbat  the  terma  "  Cymric "  and 
"Gaelic"  are  antiquaterl  and  improper.  The  reader  will 
please  substitute  Celtic  dialect  A  and  Celtic  dialect  B  for 
them,  and  consult,  on  this  subject,  especially  with  re<jard 
to  proposition  III.,  Professor  Khys'  Early  Britain. — 1894.] 


266  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  y 

statement  of  St.  Jerome  before  cited;  in  the 
similarity  of  the  names  of  places  in  Belgic  Gaul 
and  in  Britain;  and  in  the  direct  comparison  of 
sundry  ancient  Gaulish  and  Belgic  words  which 
have  been  preserved,  with  the  existing  Cymric 
dialects,  for  which  I  must  refer  to  the  learned  work 
of  Brandes. 

Formerly,  as  at  the  present  day,  the  Cymric 
dialects  of  Celtic  were  spoken  by  both  the  fair  and 
the  dark  stocks. 

III.  There  is  no  record  of  Gaelic  being  spohen 
anywhere  save  in  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  the  Isle  of 
Man. 

This  appears  to  be  the  final  result  of  the  long 
discussions  which  have  taken  place  on  this  much- 
debated  question.  As  is  the  case  with  the  Cymric 
dialects,  Gaelic  is  now  spoken  by  both  dark  and 
fair  stocks. 

IV.  When  the  Teutonic  languages  first  hecame 
known,  they  were  spoken  only  *  hy  Xanthochroi, 
that  is  to  say,  by  the  Germans,  the  Scandinavians, 
and  Goths.  And  they  were  imported  by  Xantho- 
chroi into  Gaul  and  ijito  Britain. 

In  Gaul,  the  imported  Teutonic  dialect  has  been 
completely  overpowered  by  the  more  or  less  modi- 
fied Latin,  which  it  found  already  in  possession; 
and  what  Teutonic  blood  there  may  be  in  modern 
Frenchmen  is  not  adequately  represented  in  their 

[*  "  Only  "  is  too  strong  a  word,  as  there  were  doubt- 
less some  Melanochroi  among  the  Teutonic  tribes. — 1894.] 


f  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  267 

language.     In  Britain,  on  the  contrary,  the  Teu- 
tonic dialects  have  overpowered  the  pre-existing 
forms  of  speech,  and  the  people  are  vastly  less 
"  Teutonic  "  than  their  language.     Whatever  may 
have  been  the  extent  to  which  the  Celtic-speaking 
population  of  the  eastern  half  of  Britain  was  trod- 
den out  and  supplanted  by  the  Teutonic-speaking 
Saxons  and  Danes,  it  is  quite  certain  that  no  con- 
siderable displacement  of  the  Celtic-speaking  peo- 
ple occurred  in  Cornwall,  Wales,  or  the  Highlands 
of  Scotland;  and  that  nothing  approaching  to  the 
extinction  of  that  people  took  place  in  Devonshire, 
Somerset,  or  the  western  moiety  of  Britain  gen- 
erally.    Nevertheless,  the  fundamentally  Teutonic 
English  language  is  now  spoken  throughout  Brit- 
ain, except  by  an  insignificant  fraction  of  the  popu- 
lation in  Wales  and  the  Western  Highlands.    But 
it  is  obvious  that  this  fact  affords  not  the  slightest 
justification  for  the  common  practice  of  speaking 
of  the  present  inhabitants  of  Britain  as  an  "  Anglo- 
Saxon  "  race.     It  is,  in  fact,  just  as  absurd  as  the 
habit  of  talking  of  the  French  people  as  a  "  Latin  " 
race,  because  they  speak  a  language  which  is,  in 
the  main,  derived  from  Latin.     And  the  absurdity 
becomes  the  more  patent  when  those  who  have  no 
hesitation  in  calling  a  Devonshire  man,  or  a  Cor- 
nish man,  an  "  Anglo-Saxon,"  would  think  it  ridic- 
ulous to  call  a  Tipperary  man  by  the  same  title, 
though  he  and  his  forefathers  may  have  spoken 
English  for  as  long  a  time  as  the  Cornish  man. 


268  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  ▼ 

Ireland,  at  the  earliest  period  of  which  we  have 
any  knowledge,  contained,  like  Britain,  a  dark  and 
a  fair  stock,  which,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe, 
were  identical  with  the  dark  and  the  fair  stocks 
of  Britain.  When  the  Irish  first  became  known 
they  spoke  a  Gaelic  dialect,  and  though,  for  many 
centuries,  Scandinavians  made  continual  incursions 
upon,  and  settlements  among  them,  the  Teutonic 
languages  made  no  more  way  among  the  Irish  than 
they  did  among  the  French.  How  much  Scandi- 
navian blood  was  introduced  there  is  no  evidence  to 
show.  But  after  the  conquest  of  Ireland  by  Henry 
II.,  the  English  people,  consisting  in  part  of  the 
descendants  of  Cymric  speakers,  and  in  part  of  the 
descendants  of  Teutonic  speakers,  made  good  their 
footing  in  the  eastern  half  of  the  island,  as  the 
Saxons  and  Danes  made  good  theirs  in  England; 
and  did  their  best  to  complete  the  parallel  by  at- 
tempting the  extirpation  of  the  Gaelic-speaking 
Irish.  And  they  succeeded  to  a  considerable  ex- 
tent; a  large  part  of  Eastern  Ireland  is  now  peopled 
by  men  who  are  substantially  English  by  descent, 
and  the  English  language  has  spread  over  the  land 
far  beyond  the  limits  of  English  blood. 

Ethnologically,  the  Irish  people  were  originally, 
like  the  people  of  Britain,  a  mixture  of  Melano- 
chroi  and  Xanthochroi.  They  resembled  the  Brit- 
ons in  speaking  a  Celtic  tongue;  but  it  was  a  Gaelic 
and  not  a  Cymric  form  of  the  Celtic  language.  Ire- 
land was  untouched  by  the  Koman  conquest,  nor 


?  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  269 

do  the  Saxons  seem  to  have  had  any  influence  upon 
her  destinies,  but  the  Danes  and  Norsemen  poured 
in  a  contingent  of  Teutonism,  which  has  been  large- 
ly supplemented  by  English  and  Scotch  efforts. 

What,  then,  is  the  value  of  the  ethnological 
difference  between  the  Englishman  of  the  western 
half  of  England  and  the  Irishman  of  the  eastern 
half  of  Ireland  ?  For  what  reason  does  the  one  de- 
serve the  name  of  a  "  Celt,"  and  not  the  other? 
And  further,  if  we  turn  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
western  half  of  Ireland,  why  should  the  term 
"  Celts  "  be  applied  to  them  more  than  to  the  in- 
habitants of  Cornwall?  And  if  the  name  is  ap- 
plicable to  the  one  as  justly  as  to  the  other,  why 
should  not  intelhgence,  perseverance,  thrift,  indus- 
try, sobriety,  respect  for  law,  be  admitted  to  be 
Celtic  virtues?  And  why  should  we  not  seek  for 
the  cause  of  their  absence  in  something  else  than 
the  idle  pretext  of  "  Celtic  blood  "? 

I  have  been  unable  to  meet  with  any  answers  to 
these  questions. 

V.  The  Celtic  and  the  Teutonic  dialects  are 
members  of  the  same  great  Aryan  family  of  lan- 
guages; hut  there  is  evidence  to  shoio  that  a  non- 
Aryan  language  was  at  one  time  spohen  over  a 
large  extent  of  the  area  occupied  by  Melanochroi  in 
Europe. 

The  non- Aryan  language  here  referred  to  is  the 
Euskarian,  now  spoken  only  by  the  Basques,  but 
which  seems  in  earlier  times  to  have  been  the  Ian- 


270  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  ▼ 

guage  of  the  Aquitanians  and  Spaniards,  and  may 
possibly  have  extended  much  further  to  the  East. 
"Whether  it  has  any  connection  with  the  Ligurian 
and  Oscan  dialects  are  questions  upon  which,  of 
course,  I  do  not  presume  to  offer  any  opinion.  But 
it  is  important  to  remark  that  it  is  a  language  the 
area  of  which  has  gradually  diminished  without  any 
corresponding  extirpation  of  the  people  who  primi- 
tively spoke  it;  so  that  the  people  of  Spain  and  of 
Aquitaine  at  the  present  day  must  be  largely  "  Eu- 
skarian  "  by  descent  in  just  the  same  sense  as  the 
Cornish  men  are  "  Celtic  "  by  descent. 

Such  seem  to  me  to  be  the  main  facts  respect- 
ing the  ethnology  of  the  British  islands  and  of 
Western  Europe,  which  may  be  said  to  be  fairly 
established.  The  hypothesis  by  which  I  think 
(with  De  Belloguet  and  Thurnam)  the  facts  may 
best  be  explained  is  this:  In  very  remote  times 
Western  Europe  and  the  British  islands  were  inhab- 
ited by  the  dark  stock,  or  the  Melanochroi,  alone, 
and  these  Melanochroi  spoke  dialects  allied  to  the 
Euskarian.  The  Xanthochroi,  spreading  over  the 
great  Eurasiatic  plains  westward,  and  speaking 
Aryan  dialects,  gradually  invaded  the  territories 
of  the  Melanochroi.  The  Xanthochroi,  who  thus 
came  into  contact  with  the  Western  Melanochroi, 
spoke  a  Celtic  language;  and  that  Celtic  language, 
whether  Cymric  or  Gaelic,  spread  over  the  Melano- 
chroi far  beyond  the  limits  of  intermixture  of  blood, 
supplanting  Euskarian,  just  as  English  and  French 


T  BRITISH  ETHNOLOGY.  271 

have  supplanted  Celtic.  Even  as  early  as  Caesar's 
time,  I  suppose  that  the  Euskarian  was  everywhere, 
except  in  Spain  and  in  Aquitaine,  replaced  by  Cel- 
tic, and  thus  the  Celtic  speakers  were  no  longer  of 
one  ethnological  stock,  but  of  two.  Both  in  West- 
ern Europe  and  in  England  a  third  wave  of  lan- 
guage— m  the  one  case  Latin,  in  the  other  Teu- 
tonic— has  spread  over  the  same  area.  In  Western 
Europe,  it  has  left  a  fragment  of  the  primary  Eu- 
skarian in  one  corner  of  the  country,  and  a  frag- 
ment of  the  secondary  Celtic  in  another.  In  the 
British  islands,  only  outlying  pools  of  the  second- 
ary linguistic  wave  remain  in  Wales,  the  Highlands, 
Ireland,  and  the  Isle  of  Man.  If  this  hypothesis  is 
a  sound  one,  it  follows  that  the  name  of  Celtic  is  not 
properly  applicable  to  the  Melanochroic  or  dark 
stock  of  Europe.  They  are  merely,  so  to  speak, 
secondary  Celts.  The  primary  and  aboriginal  Cel- 
tic-speaking people  are  Xanthochroi — the  typical 
Gauls  of  the  ancient  writers,  and  the  close  allies  by 
blood,  customs,  and  language,  of  the  Germans. 


VI. 


THE  AEYAN  QUESTION  AND  PEE- 
HISTOEIC  MAN. 

[1890.] 

The  rapid  increase  of  natural  knowledge,  which 
is  the  chief  characteristic  of  our  age,  is  effected  in 
various  ways.  The  main  army  of  science  moves  to 
the  conquest  of  new  worlds  slowly  and  surely,  nor 
ever  cedes  an  inch  of  the  territory  gained.  But 
the  advance  is  covered  and  facilitated  by  the  cease- 
less activity  of  clouds  of  light  troops  provided  with 
a  weapon — always  efficient,  if  not  always  an  arm 
of  precision — the  scientific  imagination.  It  is  the 
business  of  these  enfants  perdus  of  science  to  make 
raids  into  the  realm  of  ignorance  wherever  they 
see,  or  think  they  see,  a  chance;  and  cheerfully  to 
accept  defeat,  or  it  may  be  annihilation,  as  the 
reward  of  error.  Unfortunately,  the  public,  which 
watches  the  progress  of  the  campaign,  too  often 
mistakes  a  dashing  incursion  of  the  Uhlans  for  a 
forward  movement  of  the  main  body;  fondly  im- 
agining that  the  strategic  movement  to  the  rear, 
which  occasionally  follows,  indicates  a  battle  lost 
272 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  273 

by  science.  And  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
error  is  too  often  justified  by  the  effects  of  the  irre- 
pressible tendency  which  men  of  science  share  with 
all  other  sorts  of  men  known  to  me,  to  be  impatient 
of  that  most  wholesome  state  of  mind — suspended 
judgment;  to  assume  the  objective  truth  of  specula- 
tions which,  from  the  nature  of  the  evidence  in 
their  favour,  can  have  no  claim  to  be  more  than 
working  hypotheses. 

The  history  of  the  "  Aryan  question  "  affords  a 
striking  illustration  of  these  general  remarks. 

About  a  century  ago.  Sir  William  Jones  pointed 
out  the  close  alliance  of  the  chief  European  *lan- 
guages  with  Sanskrit  and  its  derivative  dialects 
now  spoken  in  India.  Brilliant  and  laborious  phi- 
lologists, in  long  succession,  enlarged  and  strength- 
ened this  position,  until  the  truth  that  Sanskrit, 
Zend,  Armenian,  Greek,  Latin,  Lithuanian,  Slavo- 
nian, German,  Celtic,  and  so  on,  stand  to  one  an- 
other in  the  relation  of  descendants  from  a  common 
stock,  became  firmly  established,  and  thencefor- 
ward formed  part  of  the  permanent  acquisitions  of 
science.  Moreover,  the  term  "  Aryan "  is  very 
generally,  if  not  universally,  accepted  as  a  name 
for  the  group  of  languages  thus  allied.  Hence, 
when  one  speaks  of  "  Aryan  languages,"  no  hypo- 
thetical assumptions  are  involved.  It  is  a  matter  of 
fact  that  such  languages  exist,  that  they  present 
certain  substantial  and  formal  relations,  and  that 

convention  sanctions  the  name  applied  to  them. 
182 


274  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  n 

But  the  close  connection  of  these  widely  differ- 
entiated languages  remains  altogether  inexplicable, 
unless  it  is  admitted  that  they  are  modifications  of 
an  original  relatively  undifferentiated  tongue;  just 
as  the  intimate  affinities  of  the  Romance  languages 
— French,  Italian,  Spanish,  and  the  rest — would 
be  incomprehensible  if  there  were  no  Latin,  The 
original  or  "  primitive  Aryan  "  tongue,  thus  postu- 
lated, unfortunately  no  longer  exists.  It  is  a  hy- 
pothetical entity,  which  corresponds  with  the 
"  primitive  stock  "  of  generic  and  higher  groups 
among  plants  and  animals;  and  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  its  former  existence,  and  of  the  process  of 
evolution  which  has  brought  about  the  present 
state  of  things  philological,  is  forced  upon  us  by 
deductive  reasoning  of  similar  cogency  to  that  em- 
ployed about  things  biological. 

Thus,  the  former  existence  of  a  body  of  rela- 
tively uniform  dialects,  which  may  be  called  primi- 
tive Aryan,  may  be  added  to  the  stock  of  definite- 
ly acquired  truths.  But  it  is  obvious  that,  in  the 
absence  of  writing  or  of  phonographs,  the  exist- 
ence of  a  language  implies  that  of  speakers.  If 
there  were  primitive  Aryan  dialects,  there  must 
have  been  primitive  Aryan  people  who  used  them; 
and  these  people  must  have  resided  somewhere  or 
other  on  the  earth's  surface.  Hence  philology, 
without  stepping  beyond  its  legitimate  bounds  and 
keeping  speculation  within  the  limits  of  bare  neces- 
sity, arrives,  not  only  at  the  conceptions  of  Aryan 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  275 

languages  and  of  a  primitive  Aryan  language;  but 
of  a  primitive  Aryan  people  and  of  a  primitive 
Aryan  home,  or  country  occupied  by  them. 

But  where  was  this  home  of  the  Aryans? 
When  the  labours  of  modern  philologists  began, 
Sanskrit  was  the  most  archaic  of  all  the  Aryan  lan- 
guages known  to  them.  It  appeared  to  present  the 
qualifications  required  in  the  parental  or  primitive 
Aryan.  Brilliant  Uhlans  made  a  charge  at  this 
opening.  The  scientific  imagination  seated  the 
primitive  Aryans  in  the  valley  of  the  Ganges;  and 
showed,  as  in  a  vision,  the  successive  columns, 
guided  by  enterprising  Brahmins,  which  set  out 
thence  to  people  the  regions  of  the  western  world 
with  Greeks  and  Celts  and  Germans.  But  the 
progress  of  philology  itself  sufficed  to  show  that 
this  Balaclava  charge,  however  magnificent,  was 
not  profitable  warfare.  The  internal  evidence  of 
the  Vedas  proved  that  their  composers  had  not 
reached  the  Ganges.  On  the  other  hand,  the  com- 
parison of  Zend  with  Sanskrit  left  no  alternative 
open  to  the  assumption  that  these  languages  were 
modifications  of  an  original  Indo-Iranian  tongue, 
spoken  by  a  people  of  whom  the  Aryans  of  India 
and  those  of  Persia  were  offshoots,  and  who  could 
therefore  be  hardly  lodged  elsewhere  than  on  the 
frontiers  of  both  Persia  and  India — that  is  to  say, 
somewhere  in  the  region  which  is  at  present  known 
under  the  names  of  Turkestan,  Afghanistan,  and 
Ivafiristan.     Thus  far,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted 


276  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

that  we  are  well  within  the  ground  of  which  science 
has  taken  enduring  possession.  But  the  Uhlans 
were  not  content  to  remain  within  the  lines  of  this 
surely-won  position.  For  some  reason,  which  is 
not  quite  clear  to  me,  they  thought  fit  to  restrict 
the  home  of  the  primitive  Aryans  to  a  particular 
part  of  the  region  in  question;  to  lodge  them  amidst 
the  bleak  heights  of  the  long  range  of  the  Hindoo 
Koosh  and  on  the  inhospitable  plateau  of  Pamir. 
From  their  hives  in  these  secluded  valleys  and 
wind-swept  wastes,  successive  swarms  of  Celts  and 
Greco-Latins,  Teutons  and  Slavs,  were  thrown  off 
to  settle,  after  long  wanderings,  in  distant  Europe. 
The  Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir  theory,  once  enunciated, 
gradually  hardened  into  a  sort  of  dogma;  and  there 
have  not  been  wanting  theorists,  who  laid  down 
the  routes  of  the  successive  bands  of  emigrants 
with  as  much  confidence  as  if  they  had  access  to  the 
records  of  the  office  of  a  primitive  Aryan  Quarter- 
master-General. It  is  really  singular  to  observe 
the  deference  which  has  been  shown,  and  is  yet 
sometimes  shown,  to  a  speculation  which  can,  at 
best,  claim  to  be  regarded  as  nothing  better  than  a 
somewhat  risky  working  hypothesis. 

Forty  years  ago,  the  credit  of  the  Hindoo- 
Koosh-Pamir  theory  had  risen  almost  to  that  of  an 
axiom.  The  first  person  to  instil  doubt  of  its  value 
into  my  mind  was  the  late  Eobert  Gordon  Latham, 
a  man  of  great  learning  and  singular  originality, 
whose  attacks  upon  the  Hindoo-Kooshite  doctrine 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  277 

could  scarcely  have  failed  as  completely  as  they 
did,  if  his  great  powers  had  been  bestowed  upon 
making  his  books  not  only  worthy  of  being  read, 
but  readable.     The  impression  left  upon  my  mind, 
at  that  time,  by  various  conversations  about  the 
*'  Sarmatian  hypothesis,"  which  my  friend  wished 
to  substitute  for  the  Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir  specula- 
tion, was  that  the  one  and  the  other  rested  pretty 
much  upon  a  like  foundation  of  guess-work.     That 
there  was  no  sufficient  reason  for  planting  the 
primitive   Aryans  in  the   Hindoo   Koosh,   or  in 
Pamir,  seemed  plain  enough;  but  that  there  was 
little  better  ground,  on  the  evidence  then  adduced, 
for  settling  them  in  the  region  at  present  occupied 
by  Western  Russia,  or  Podolia,  appeared  to  me  to 
be  not  less  plain.     The  most  I  thought  Latham 
proved  was,  that  the  Aryan  people  of  Indo-Iranian 
speech  were  just  as  likely  to  have  come  from  Eu- 
rope, as  the  Aryan  people  of  Greek,  or  Teutonic, 
or  Celtic  speech  from  Asia.     Of  late  years,  Lath- 
am's views,  so  long  neglected,  or  mentioned  merely 
as  an  example  of  insular  eccentricity,  have  been 
taken  up  and  advocated  with  much  ability  in  Ger- 
many as  well  as  in  this  country — principally  by 
philologists.     Indeed,  the  glory  of  Hindoo-Koosh- 
Pamir  seems  altogether  to  have  departed.     Pro- 
fessor Max  Midler,  to  whom  Aryan  philology  owes 
so  much,  will  not  say  more  now,  than  that  he  holds 
by  the  conviction  that  the  seat  of  the  primitive 
Aryans  was  "  somewhere  in  Asia."    Dr.  Schrader 


278  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  n 

sums  up  in  favour  of  European  Russia;  while  Herr 
Penka  would  have  us  transplant  the  home  of  the 
primitive  Aryans  from  Pamir  in  the  far  east  to  the 
Scandinavian  peninsula  in  the  far  west. 

I  must  refer  those  who  desire  to  acquaint  them- 
selves with  the  philological  arguments  on  which 
these  conclusions  are  based  to  the  recently  pub- 
lished works  of  Dr.  Schrader  and  Canon  Taylor;  * 
and  to  Penka's  "  Die  Herkunft  der  Arier,"  which, 
in  spite  of  the  strong  spice  of  the  Uhlan  which 
runs  through  it,  I  have  found  extremely  well  worth 
study.  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  able  to  look  at  the 
Aryan  question  under  any  but  the  biological  aspect; 
to  which  I  now  turn. 

Any  biologist  who  studies  the  history  of  the 
Aryan  question,  and,  taking  the  philological  facts 
on  trust,  regards  it  exclusively  from  the  point  of 
Tiew  of  anthropology,  will  observe  that,  very  early, 
the  purely  biological  conception  of  "  race  "  illegiti- 
mately mixed  itself  up  with  the  ideas  derived  from 
pure  philology.  It  is  quite  proper  to  speak  of 
Aryan  "  people,"  because,  as  we  have  seen,  the  ex- 
istence of  the  language  implies  that  of  a  people 
who  speak  it;  it  might  be  equally  permissible  to  call 
Latin  people  all  those  who  speak  Eomance  dia- 
lects.    But,  just  as  the  application  of  the  term 

♦  Schrader.  PrrJiistoric  Antiqiiitie/t  of  the  Aryan  Peo- 
ples. Translated  by  F.  B.  Jevons,  M.A.,  1890.  Taylor, 
Tfie  Origin  of  the  Aryans,  1890. 


Tl  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  279 

Latin  "  race  "  to  the  divers  people  who  speak  Eo- 
mance  languages,  at  the  present  day,  is  none  the 
less  absurd  because  it  is  common;  so,  it  is  quite 
possible,  that  it  may  be  equally  wrong  to  call  the 
people  who  spoke  the  primitive  Aryan  dialects  and 
inhabited  the  primitive  home,  the  Aryan  race. 
"  Aryan  "  is  properly  a  term  of  classification  used 
in  philology.     "  Eace  "  is  the  name  of  a  sub-divi- 
sion of  one  of  those  groups  of  living  things  which 
are  called  "  species  "  in  the  technical  language  of 
Zoology  and  Botany;  and  the  term  connotes  the 
possession  of  characters  distinct  from  those  of  the 
other  members  of  the  species,  which  have  a  strong 
tendency  to  appear  in  the  progeny  of  all  members 
of  the  races.     Such  race-characters  may  be  either 
bodily  or  mental,  though  in  practice,  the  latter,  as 
less  easy  of  observation  and  definition,  can  rarely  be 
taken  into  account.     Language  is  rooted  half  in 
the  bodily  and  half  in  the  mental  nature  of  man. 
The  vocal  sounds  which  form  the  raw  materials  of 
language  could  not  be  produced  without  a  peculiar 
conformation  of  the  organs  of  speech;  the  enuncia- 
tion of  duly  accented  syllables  would  be  impossible 
without  the  nicest  co-ordination  of  the  action  of 
•ihe  muscles  which  move  these  organs;  and  such 
eo-ordination  depends  on  the  mechanism  of  certain 
portions  of  the  nervous  system.     It  is  therefore 
conceivable  that  the  structure  of  this  highly  com- 
plex speaking  apparatus  should  determine  a  man's 
linguistic  potentiality;  that  is  to  say,  should  en- 


280  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

able  him  to  use  a  language  of  one  class  and  not  of 
another.  It  is  further  conceivable  that  a  particu- 
lar linguistic  potentiality  should  be  inherited  and 
become  as  good  a  race  mark  as  any  other.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  not  proven  that  the  linguistic 
potentialities  of  all  men  are  the  same.  It  is 
affirmed,  for  example,  that,  in  the  United  States, 
the  enunciation  and  the  timbre  of  the  voice  of  an 
American-born  negro,  however  thoroughly  he  may 
have  learned  English,  can  be  readily  distinguished 
from  that  of  a  white  man.  But,  even  admitting 
that  differences  may  obtain  among  the  various  races 
of  men,  to  this  extent,  I  do  not  think  that  there  is 
any  good  ground  for  the  supposition  that  an  infant 
of  any  race  would  be  unable  to  learn,  and  to  use 
with  ease,  the  language  of  any  other  race  of  men 
among  whom  it  might  be  brought  up.  History 
abundantly  proves  the  transmission  of  languages 
from  some  races  to  others;  and  there  is  no  evidence, 
that  I  know  of,  to  show  that  any  race  is  incapable 
of  substituting  a  foreign  idiom  for  its  native  tongue. 
From  these  considerations  it  follows  that  com- 
munity of  language  is  no  proof  of  unity  of  race,  is 
not  even  presumptive  evidence  of  racial  identity.* 

*  Canon  Taylor  {Origin  of  the  Aryans,  p.  31)  states 
that  "  Cuno  ....  was  the  first  to  insist  on  what  is  now 
looked  on  as  an  axiom  in  ethnology — that  race  is  not  co- 
extensive with  language,"  in  a  work  published  in  1871. 
I  may  be  permitted  to  quote  a  passage  from  a  lecture 
delivered  on  the  9th  of  January,  1870,  which  brought  me 
into  a  great  deal  of  trouble.  "  Physical,  mental,  and 
moral  peculiarities  go  with  blood  and  not  with  language. 


n  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  281 

All  that  it  does  prove  is  that,  at  some  time  or  other, 
free  and  prolonged  intercourse  has  taken  place  be- 
tween the  speakers  of  the  same  language.  Phi- 
lology, therefore,  while  it  may  have  a  perfect  right 
to  postulate  the  existence  of  a  primitive  Aryan 
"  people,"  has  no  business  to  substitute  "  race  "  for 
"  people."  The  speakers  of  primitive  Aryan  may 
have  been  a  mixture  of  two  or  more  races,  Just  as 
are  the  speakers  of  English  and  of  French,  at  the 
present  time. 

The  older  philological  ethnologists  felt  the  dif- 
ficulty which  arose  out  of  their  identification  of 
linguistic  with  racial  affinity,  but  were  not  dis- 
mayed by  it.  Strong  in  the  prestige  of  their  great 
discovery  of  the  unity  of  the  Aryan  tongues,  they 
were  quite  prepared  to  make  the  philological  and 
the  biological  categories  fit,  by  the  exercise  of 
a  little  pressure  on  that  about  which  they 
knew  less.  And  their  judgment  was  often  uncon- 
sciously warped  by  strong  monogenistic  proclivities, 
which,  at  bottom,  however  respectable  and  philan- 
thropic their  origin,  had  nothing  to  do  with  sci- 
ence. So  the  patent  fact  that  men  of  Aryan  speech 
presented  widely  diverse  racial  characters  was  ex- 
plained away  by   maintaining  that  the   physical 

In  the  United  States  the  nejrroes  have  spoken  Enfjlish 
for  generations;  but  no  one  on  that  ground  wouhl  call 
them  Englishmen,  or  expect  them  to  difTer  physically, 
mentally,  or  morally  from  other  negroes." — Pall  Mali 
Gazette,  Jan.  10,  1870.  But  the  "axiom  in  ethnology" 
had  been  implied,  if  not  enunciated,  before  mj'  time;  for 
example,  by  Desmoulins  in  1826  (See  above  p.  215.) 


282  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

differentiation  was  post-Arj^an;  to  put  it  broadly, 
that  the  Aryans  in  Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir  were  truly 
of  one  race;  but  that,  while  one  colony,  subjected 
to  the  sweltering  heat  of  the  Gangetic  plains,  had 
fined  down  and  darkened  into  the  Bengalee,  an- 
other had  bleached  and  shot  up,  under  the  cool  and 
misty  skies  of  the  north,  into  the  semblance  of 
Pomeranian  Grenadiers;  or  of  blue-eyed,  fair- 
skinned,  six-foot  Scotch  Highlanders.  I  do  not 
know  that  any  of  the  Uhlans  who  fought  so  vigor- 
ously under  this  flag  are  left  now.  I  doubt  if  any 
one  is  prepared  to  say  that  he  believes  that  the  in- 
fluence of  external  conditions,  alone,  accounts  for 
the  wide  physical  differences  between  Englishmen 
and  Bengalese.  So  far  as  India  is  concerned,  the 
internal  evidence  of  the  old  literature  sufflciently 
proves  that  the  Aryan  invaders  were  "  white  "  men. 
It  is  hardly  to  be  doubted  that  they  intermixed 
with  the  dark  Dravidian  aborigines;  and  that  the 
high-caste  Hindoos  are  what  they  are  in  virtue  of 
the  Aryan  blood  which  they  have  inherited,*  and 

*  I  am  unable  to  discover  good  grounds  for  the  severity 
of  the  criticism,  in  the  name  of  "  the  anthropologists," 
with  which  Professor  Max  Miiller's  assertion  that  the 
same  blood  runs  in  the  veins  of  English  soldiers  "  as  in 
the  veins  of  the  dark  Bengalese,''  and  that  there  is  "  a 
legitimate  relationship  between  Hindoo,  Greek,  and  Teu- 
ton," has  been  visited.  So  far  as  I  know  anything  about 
anthropology,  I  should  say  that  these  statements  may  be 
correct  literally,  and  probably  are  so  substantially.  I 
do  not  know  of  any  good  reason  for  the  physical  differ- 
ences between  a  high-caste  Hindoo  and  a  Dravidian.  ex- 
cept the  Aryan  blood  in  the  veins  of  the  former;  and  the 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  283 

of  the  selective  influence  of  their  surroundings 
operating  on  the  mixture. 

The  assumption  that,  as  there  must  have  been 
a  primitive  Aryan  people,  in  the  philological  sense, 
so  that  people  must  have  constituted  a  race  in  the 
biological  sense,  is  pretty  generally  made  in  modern 
discussions  of  the  Aryan  problem.  But  whether 
the  men  of  the  primitive  Aryan  race  were  blonds 
or  brunets,  whether  they  had  long  or  round  heads, 
were  tall  or  were  short,  are  hotly  debated  questions, 
into  the  discussion  of  which  considerations  quite 
foreign  to  science  are  sometimes  imported.  The 
combination  of  swarthiness  with  stature  above  the 
average  and  a  long  skull,  confer  upon  me  the  serene 
impartiality  of  a  mongrel;  and,  having  given  this 
pledge  of  fair  dealing,  I  proceed  to  state  the  case 
for  the  hypothesis  I  am  inclined  to  adopt.  In  do- 
ing so,  I  am  aware  that  I  deliberately  take  the  shil- 
ling of  the  recruiting-sergeant  of  the  Light  Bri- 
gade, and  I  warn  all  and  sundry  that  such  is  the 
case. 

Looking  at  the  discussions  which  have  taken 
place  from  a  purely  anthropological  point  of  view, 
the  first  point  wliich  has  struck  me  is  that  the  prob- 
lem is  far  more  complicated  and  difficult  than 
many  of  the  disputants  appear  to  imagine;  and  the 
second,  that  the  data  upon  which  we  have  to  go 

strength  of  the   infusion  is  probably  quite  as  great  in 
some  Hindoos  as  in  some  EngUsh  soldiers. 


284  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

are  grievously  insufficient  in  extent  and  in  pre- 
cision. Our  historical  records  cover  such,  an  in- 
finitesimally  small  extent  of  the  past  life  of  human- 
ity, that  we  obtain  little  help  from  them.  Even  so 
late  as  1500  b.  c,  northern  Eurasia  lies  in  historical 
darkness,  except  for  such  glimmer  of  light  as  may 
be  thrown  here  and  there  by  the  literatures  of 
Egypt  and  of  Babylonia.  Yet,  at  that  time,  it  is 
probable  that  Sanskrit,  Zend,  and  Greek,  to  say 
nothing  of  other  Aryan  tongues,  had  long  been  dif- 
ferentiated from  primitive  Aryan.  Even  a  thou- 
sand years  later,  little  enough  accurate  information 
is  to  be  had  about  the  racial  characters  of  the  Euro- 
pean and  Asiatic  tribes  known  to  the  Greeks.  We 
are  thrown  upon  such  resources  as  archaeology  and 
human  palaeontology  have  to  offer,  and  notwith- 
standing the  remarkable  progress  made  of  late 
years,  they  are  still  meagre.  Nevertheless,  it 
strikes  me  that,  from  the  purely  anthropological 
side,  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  in  favour  of 
the  two  propositions  maintained  by  the  new  school 
of  philologists;  first,  that  the  people  who  spoke 
"  primitive  Aryan "  were  a  distinct  and  well- 
marked  race  of  mankind;  and,  secondly,  that  the 
area  of  the  distribution  of  this  race,  in  primaeval 
times,  lay  in  Europe,  rather  than  in  Asia. 

For  the  last  two  thousand  years,  at  least,  the 
southern  half  of  Scandinavia  and  the  opposite  or 
southern  shores  of  the  Baltic  have  been  occupied 
by  a  race  of  mankind  possessed  of  very  definite 


Ti  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  285 

characters.  Typical  specimens  have  tall  and  mas- 
sive frames,  fair  complexions,  blue  eyes,  and  yel- 
low or  reddish  hair — that  is  to  say,  they  are  pro- 
nounced blonds.  Their  skulls  are  long,  in  the 
sense  that  the  breadth  is  usually  less,  often  much 
less,  than  four-fifths  of  the  length,  and  they  are 
usually  tolerably  high.  But  in  this  last  respect 
they  vary.  Men  of  this  blond,  long-headed  race 
abound  from  eastern  Prussia  to  northern  Belgium; 
they  are  met  with  in  northern  France  and  are 
common  in  some  parts  of  our  own  islands.  The 
people  of  Teutonic  speech,  Goths,  Saxons,  Ale- 
manni,  and  Franks,  who  poured  forth  out  of  the 
regions  bordering  the  North  Sea  and  the  Baltic, 
to  the  destruction  of  the  Roman  Empire,  were  men 
of  this  race;  and  the  accounts  of  the  ancient  his- 
torians of  the  incursions  of  the  Gauls  into  Italy  and 
Greece,  between  the  fifth  and  the  second  centuries 
B.  c,  leave  little  doubt  that  their  hordes  were 
largely,  if  not  wholly,  composed  of  similar  men. 
The  contents  of  numerous  interments  in  southern 
Scandinavia  prove  that,  as  far  back  as  archaeology 
takes  us  into  the  so-called  neolithic  age,  the  great 
majority  of  the  inhabitants  had  the  same  stature 
and  cranial  peculiarities  as  at  present,  though  their 
bony  fabric  bears  marks  of  somewhat  greater  rug- 
gedness  and  savagery.  There  is  no  evidence  that 
the  country  was  occupied  by  men  before  the  advent 
of  these  tall,  blond  long-heads.  But  there  is  proof 
of  the  presence,  along  with  the  latter,  of  a  small 


286  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

percentage  of  people  with  broad  skulls;  skulls,  that 
is,  the  breadth  of  which  is  more,  often  very  much 
more,  than  four-fifths  of  the  length. 

At  the  present  day,  in  whatever  direction  we 
travel  inland  from  the  continental  area  occupied 
by  the  blond  long-heads,  whether  south-west,  into 
central  France;  south,  through  the  Walloon  prov- 
inces of  Belgium  into  eastern  France;  into  Swit- 
zerland, South  Germany,  and  the  Tyrol;  or  south- 
east, into  Poland  and  Eussia;  or  north,  into  Fin- 
land and  Lapland,  broad-heads  make  their  appear- 
ance, in  force,  among  the  long-heads.  And, 
eventually,  we  find  ourselves  among  people  who 
are  as  regularly  broad-headed  as  the  Swedes  and 
North  Germans  are  long-headed.  As  a  general 
rule,  in  France,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  and  South 
Germany,  the  increase  in  the  proportion  of  broad 
skulls  is  accompanied  by  the  appearance  of  a  larger 
and  larger  proportion  of  men  of  brunet  com- 
plexion and  of  a  lower  stature;  until,  in  central 
France  and  thence  eastwards,  through  the  Ce- 
vennes  and  the  Alps  of  Dauphiny,  Savoy,  and  Pied- 
mont, to  the  western  plains  of  North  Italy,  the 
tall  hlond  long-heads  *  practically  disappear,  and 

*  I  may  plead  the  precedent  of  the  good  English  words 
"  block-head  "  and  "  thick-head  "  for  "  broad-head  "  and 
"  long-head,"  but  I  cannot  say  that  they  are  elegant.  I 
might  have  employed  the  technical  terms  brachycephali 
and  dolichocephali.  But  it  cannot  be  said  that  they  are 
much  more  graceful ;  and,  moreover,  they  are  sometimes 
employed  in  senses  diflferent  from  that  which  I  have  given 
in   the   definition   of   broad-heads   and   long-heads.      The 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  287 

are  replaced  by  sJiort  hrunet  hroad-heads.  The 
ordinary  Savoyard  may  be  described  in  terms  the 
converse  of  those  which  apply  to  the  ordinary 
Swede.  He  is  short,  swarthy,  dark-eyed,  dark- 
haired,  and  his  skull  is  very  broad.  Between  the 
two  extreme  types,  the  one  seated  on  the  shores  of 
the  North  Sea  and  the  Baltic,  and  the  other  on 
those  of  the  Mediterranean,  there  are  all  sorts  of 
intermediate  forms,  in  which  breadth  of  skull  may 
be  found  in  tall  and  in  short  blond  men,  and  in  tall 
brunet  men. 

There  is  much  reason  to  believe  that  the  brunet 
broad-heads,  now  met  with  in  central  France  and 
in  the  west  central  European  highlands,  have  in- 
habited the  same  region,  not  only  throughout  the 
historical  period,  but  long  before  it  commenced; 
and  it  is  probable  that  their  area  of  occupation  was 
formerly  more  extensive.  For,  if  we  leave  aside 
the  comparatively  late  incursions  of  the  Asiatic 
races,  the  centre  of  eruption  of  the  invaders  of  the 
southern  moiety  of  Europe  has  been  situated  in 
the  north  and  west.  In  the  case  of  the  Teutonic 
inroads  upon  the  Empire  of  Rome,  it  undoubtedly 
ky  in  the  area  now  occupied  by  the  blond  long- 

cephalic  index  is  a  number  which  expresses  the  relation 
of  the  breadth  to  the  length  of  a  skull,  taking  the  latter 
as  100.  Therefore  "  broad-heads  "  have  the  cephalic  in- 
dex above  80  and  "  long-heads  "  have  it  below  80.  The 
physiological  value  of  the  difference  is  unknown;  its 
morphological  value  depends  upon  the  observed  fact  of  the 
constancy  of  the  occurrence  of  either  long  skulls  or  broad 
skulls  among  large  bodies  of  mankind. 


288  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  ti 

heads;  and,  in  that  of  the  antecedent  Gaulish  inva- 
sions, the  physical  characters  ascribed  to  the  lead- 
ing tribes  point  to  the  same  conclusion.  Whatever 
the  causes  which  led  to  the  breaking  out  of  bounds 
of  the  blond  long-heads,  in  mass,  at  particular 
epochs,  the  natural  increase  in  numbers  of  a  vigor- 
ous and  fertile  race  must  always  have  impelled 
them  to  press  upon  their  neighbours,  and  thereby 
afford  abundant  occasions  for  intermixture.  If,  at 
any  given pre-historic  time,  we  suppose  the  lowlands 
verging  on  the  Baltic  and  the  North  Sea  to  have 
been  inhabited  by  pure  blond  long-heads,  while  the 
central  highlands  were  occupied  by  pure  brunet 
short-heads,  the  two  would  certainly  meet  and  in- 
termix in  course  of  time,  in  spite  of  the  vast  belt  of 
dense  forest  which  extended,  almost  uninterrupted- 
ly, from  the  Carpathians  to  the  Ardennes;  and  the 
result  would  be  such  an  irregular  gradation  of  the 
one  type  into  the  other  as  we  do, in  fact,  meet  with. 
On  the  south-east,  east,  and  north-east, 
throughout  what  was  once  the  kingdom  of  Poland, 
and  in  Finland,  the  preponderance  of  broad-heads 
goes  along  with  a  wide  prevalence  of  blond  com- 
plexion and  of  good  stature.  In  the  extreme 
north,  on  the  other  hand,  marked  broad-headed- 
ness  is  combined  with  low  stature,  swarthiness,  and 
more  or  less  strongly  Mongolian  features,  in  the 
Lapps.  And  it  is  to  be  observed  that  this  type  pre- 
vails increasingly  to  the  eastward,  among  the  cen- 
tral Asiatic  populations. 


Ti  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION".  289 

The  population  of  the  British  Islands,  at  the 
present  time,  offers  the  two  extremes  of  the  tall 
blond  and  the  short  brunet  types.  The  tall  blond 
long-heads  resemble  those  of  the  continent;  but 
our  short  brunet  race  is  long-headed.  Brunet 
broad-heads,  such  as  those  met  with  in  the  central 
European  highlands,  do  not  exist  among  us.  This 
absence  of  any  considerable  number  of  distinctly 
broad-headed  people  (say  with  the  cephalic  index 
above  81  or  82)  in  the  modern  population  of  the 
United  Kingdom  is  the  more  remarkable,  since  the 
investigations  of  the  late  Dr.  Thurnam,  and  others, 
proved  the  existence  of  a  large  proportion  of  tall 
broad-heads  among  the  people  interred  in  British 
tumuli  of  the  neolithic  age.  It  would  seem  that 
these  broad-skulled  immigrants  have  been  ab- 
sorbed by  an  older  long-skulled  population;  just  as, 
in  South  Germany,  the  long-headed  Alemanni  have 
been  absorbed  by  the  older  broad-heads.  The 
short  brunet  long-heads  are  not  peculiar  to  our 
islands.  On  the  contrary,  they  abound  in  western 
France  and  in  Spain,  while  they  predominate  in 
Sardinia,  Corsica,  and  South  Italy,  and,  it  may  be, 
occupied  a  much  larger  area  in  ancient  times. 

Thus,  in  the  region  which  has  been  under  con- 
sideration, there  are  evidences  of  the  existence  of 
four  races  of  men — (1)  blond  long-heads  of  tall 
stature,  (2)  brunet  broad-heads  of  short  stature,  (3) 
mongoloid  brunet  broad-heads  of  short  stature,  (4) 

brunet  long-heads  of  short  stature.     The  regions 
183 


290  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

in  which  these  races  appear  with  least  admixture 
are — (1)  Scandinavia,  North  Germany,  and  parts 
of  the  British  Islands;  (3)  central  France,  the 
central  European  highlands,  and  Piedmont;  (3) 
Arctic  and  eastern  Europe,  central  Asia;  (4)  the 
western  parts  of  the  British  Islands  and  of  France; 
Spain,  South  Italy.  And  the  inhabitants  of  the 
localities  which  lie  between  these  foci  present  the 
intermediate  gradations,  such  as  short  blond 
long-heads,  and  tall  brunet  short-heads,  and  long- 
heads which  might  be  expected  to  result  from  their 
intermixture.  The  evidence  at  present  extant  is 
consistent  with  the  supposition  that  the  blond 
long-heads,  the  brunet  broad-heads,  and  the  brunet 
long-heads  have  existed  in  Europe  throughout  his- 
toric times,  and  very  far  back  into  pre-historic 
times.  There  is  no  proof  of  any  migration  of 
Asiatics  into  Europe,  west  of  the  basin  of  the 
Dnieper,  down  to  the  time  of  Attila.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  first  great  movements  of  the  European 
population  of  which  there  is  any  conclusive  evi- 
dence is  that  series  of  Gaulish  invasions  of  the  east 
and  south,  which  ultimately  extended  from  North 
Italy  as  far  as  Galatia  in  Asia  Minor. 

It  is  now  time  to  consider  the  relations  between 
the  phenomena  of  racial  distribution,  as  thus  de- 
fined, and  those  of  the  distribution  of  languages. 
The  blond  long-heads  of  Europe  speak,  or  have 
spoken,  Lithuanian,  Teutonic,  or  Celtic  dialects. 


vx  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  291 

and  they  are  not  known  to  have  ever  used  any  but 
these  Aryan  languages.  A  large  proportion  of  the 
brunet  broad-heads  once  spoke  the  Ligurian  and 
the  Rhaetic  dialects,  which  are  believed  to  have 
been  non-Aryan.  But,  when  the  Eomans  made 
acquaintance  with  Transalpine  Gaul,  the  inhabit- 
ants of  that  country  between  the  Garonne  and  the 
Seine  (Casar's  Celtica)  seem,  at  any  rate  for  the 
most  part,  to  have  spoken  Celtic  dialects.  The 
brunet  long-heads  of  Spain  and  of  France  appear  to 
have  used  a  non-Aryan  language,  that  Euskarian 
which  still  lives  on  the  shores  of  the  Bay  of  Biscay. 
In  Britain  there  is  no  certain  knowledge  of  their 
use  of  any  but  Celtic  tongues.  What  they  spoke  in 
the  Mediterranean  islands  and  in  South  Italy  does 
not  appear. 

The  blond  broad-heads  of  Poland  and  West 
Russia  form  part  of  a  people  who,  when  they  first 
made  their  appearance  in  history,  occupied  the 
marshy  plains  imperfectly  drained  by  the  Vistula, 
on  the  west,  the  Duna,  on  the  north,  and  the 
Dnieper  and  Bug,  on  the  south.  They  were  known 
to  their  neighbours  as  Wends,  and  among  them- 
selves as  Serbs  and  Slavs.  The  Slavonic  languages 
spoken  by  these  people  are  said  to  be  most  closely 
allied  to  that  of  the  Lithuanians,  who  lay  upon 
their  northern  border.  The  Slavs  resemble  the 
South  Germans  in  the  predominance  of  broad- 
heads  among  them,  while  stature  and  complexion 
vary  from  the,  often  tall,  blonds  who  prevail  in  Po- 


292  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  Tl 

land  and  Great  Russia  to  the,  often  short,  brunets 
common  elsewhere.  There  is  certainly  nothing  in 
the  history  of  the  Slav  people  to  interfere  with  the 
supposition  that,  from  very  early  times,  they  have 
been  a  mixed  race.  For  their  country  lies  between 
that  of  the  tall,  blond,  long-heads  on  the  north, 
that  of  the  short  brunet  broad-heads  of  the  Euro- 
pean type  on  the  west,  and  that  of  the  short  brunet 
broad-heads  of  the  Asiatic  type  on  the  east:  and, 
throughout  their  history,  they  have  either  thrust 
themselves  among  their  neighbours,  or  have  been 
overrun  and  trampled  down  by  them.  Gauls  and 
Goths  have  traversed  their  country,  on  their  way  to 
the  east  and  south:  Finno-tataric  people,  on  their 
way  to  the  west,  have  not  only  done  the  like,  but 
have  held  them  in  subjection  for  centuries.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  have  been  times  when  their 
western  frontier  advanced  beyond  the  Elbe;  in- 
deed, it  is  asserted  that  they  have  sent  colonies 
to  Holland  and  even  as  far  as  southern  England. 
A  large  part  of  eastern  Germany;  Bohemia, 
Moravia,  Hungary;  the  lower  valley  of  the  Danube 
and  the  Balkan  peninsula,  have  been  largely  or 
completely  Slavonised;  and  the  Slavonic  rule  and 
language,  which  once  had  trouble  to  hold  their  own 
in  West  Russia  and  Little  Russia,  have  now  ex- 
tended their  sway  over  all  the  Finno-tataric  popu- 
lations of  Great  Russia;  while  they  are  advanc- 
ing, among  those  of  central  Asia,  up  to  the  fron- 
tiers of  India  on  the  south  and  to  the  Pacific 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  293 

on  the  extreme  east.  Thus  it  is  hardly  possible 
that  fewer  than  three  races  should  have  contributed 
to  the  formation  of  the  Slavonic  people;  namely, 
the  blond  long-heads,  the  European  brunet  broad- 
heads,  and  the  Asiatic  brunet  broad-heads.  And, 
in  the  absence  of  evidence  to  the  contrary,  it  is  cer- 
tainly permissible  to  suppose  that  it  is  the  first  race 
which  has  furnished  the  blond  complexion  and  the 
stature  observable  in  so  many,  especially  of  the 
northern  Slavs,  and  that  the  brunet  complexion 
and  the  broad  skulls  must  be  attributed  to  the 
other  two.  But,  if  that  supposition  is  permissible, 
then  the  Aryan  form  and  substance  of  the  Slavonic 
languages  may  also  be  fairly  supposed  to  have  pro- 
ceeded from  the  blond  long-heads.  They  could 
not  have  come  from  the  Asiatic  brunet  broad- 
heads,  who  all  speak  non-Aryan  languages;  and  the 
presumption  is  against  their  coming  from  the 
brunet  broad-heads  of  the  central  European  high- 
lands, among  whom  an  apparently  non-Aryan 
language  was  largely  spoken,  even  in  historical 
times. 

In  the  same  way,  the  tall  blond  tribes  among 
the  Fins  may  be  accounted  for  as  the  product  of 
admixture.  The  great  majority  of  the  Finno- 
tataric  people  are  brunet  broad-heads  of  the 
Asiatic  type.  But  that  the  Fins  proper  have  long 
been  in  contact  with  Aryans  is  evidenced  by  the 
many  words  borrowed  from  Aryan  which  their 
language  contains.     Hence  there  has  been  abun- 


294  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  ti 

dant  opportunity  for  the  mixture  of  races;  and 
for  the  transference  to  some  of  the  Fins  of  more 
or  fewer  of  the  physical  characters  of  the  Aryans 
and  vice  versa.  On  any  hypothesis,  the  frontier 
between  Aryan  and  Finno-tataric  people  must  have 
extended  across  west-central  Asia  for  a  very  long 
period;  and,  at  any  point  of  this  frontier,  it  has 
been  possible  that  mixed  races  of  blond  Fins  or  of 
brunet  Aryans  should  be  formed. 

So  much  for  the  European  people  who  now 
speak  Celtic,  or  Teutonic,  or  Slavonian,  or  Lithu- 
anian tongues;  or  who  are  known  to  have  spoken 
them,  before  the  supersession  of  so  many  of  the 
early  native  dialects  by  the  Eomance  modifications 
of  the  language  of  Kome.  With  respect  to  the 
original  speakers  of  Greek  and  Latin,  the  unravel- 
ling of  the  tangled  ethnology  of  the  Balkan  penin- 
sula and  the  ordering  of  the  chaos  of  that  of  Italy 
are  enterprises  upon  which  I  do  not  propose  to  en- 
ter. In  regard  to  the  first,  however,  there  are  a 
few  tolerably  satisfactory  data.  The  ancient 
Thracians  were  proverbially  blue-eyed  and  fair- 
haired.  Tall  blonds  were  common  among  the  an- 
cient Greeks,  who  were  a  long-headed  people;  and 
the  Sphakiots  of  Crete,  probably  the  purest  repre- 
sentatives of  the  old  Hellenes  in  existence,  are  tall 
and  blond.  But  considering  that  Greek  colonisa- 
tion was  taking  place  on  a  great  scale  in  the  eighth 
century  b.  c,  and  that,  centuries  earlier  and  later, 
the  restless  Hellene  had  been  fighting,  trading, 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  295 

plundering  and  kidnapping,  on  both  sides  of  the 
-dEgean,  and  perhaps  as  far  as  the  shores  of  Syria 
and  of  Egypt,  it  is  probable  that,  even  at  the  dawn 
of  history,  the  maritime  Greeks  were  a  very  mixed 
race.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Dorians  may  well 
have  preserved  the  original  type;  and  their  famous 
migration  may  be  the  earliest  known  example  of 
those  movements  of  the  Aryan  race  which  were,  in 
later  times,  to  change  the  face  of  Europe.  Analogy 
perhaps  justifies  a  guess,  that  those  ethnological 
shadows,  the  Pelasgi,  may  have  been  an  earher 
mixed  population,  like  that  of  Western  Gaul  and 
of  Britain  before  the  Teutonic  invasion.  At  any 
rate,  the  tall  blond  long-heads  are  so  well  repre- 
sented in  the  oldest  history  of  the  Balkan  penin- 
sula, that  tliey  may  be  credited  with  the  Aryan 
languages  spoken  there.  And  it  may  be  that  the 
tradition  which  peopled  Phrygia  with  Thracians 
represents  a  real  movement  of  the  Aryan  race  into 
Asia  Minor,  such  as  that  which  in  after  years  car- 
ried the  Gauls  thither. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  a  probable  identi- 
fication of  the  people  among  whom  the  various 
dialects  of  the  Latin  group  developed  themselves, 
with  any  race  traceable  in  Italy  in  historical 
times,  are  very  great.  In  addition  to  the  Italic 
"  aborigines "  northern  Italy  was  peopled  by 
Ligurian  brunet  broad-heads;  with  Gauls,  prob- 
ably, to  a  large  extent,  blond  long-heads;  with 
Illyrians,  about  whom  nothing  is  known.     Besides 


296  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  71 

these,  there  were  those  perplexing  people  the 
Etruscans,  who  seem  to  have  been,  originally, 
brunet  long-heads.  South  Italy  and  Sicily  present 
a  contingent  of  "  Sikels,"  Phoenicians  and  Greeks; 
while  over  all,  in  comparatively  modern  times,  fol- 
lows a  wash  of  Teutonic  blood.  The  Latin  dialects 
arose,  no  one  knows  how,  among  the  tribes  of  Cen- 
tral Italy,  encompassed  on  all  sides  by  people  of 
the  most  various  physical  characters,  who  were 
gradually  absorbed  into  the  eternally  widening 
maw  of  Eome,  and  there,  by  dint  of  using  the 
same  speech,  became  the  first  example  of  that  won- 
derful ethnological  hotch-potch  miscalled  the  Latin 
race.  The  only  trustworthy  guide  here  is  archaeo- 
logical investigation.  A  great  advance  will  have 
been  made  when  the  race  characters  of  the  pre- 
historic people  of  the  terramare  (who  are  identified 
by  Helbig  *  with  the  primitive  Umbrians)  become 
fully  known. 

I  cannot  learn  that  the  ancient  literatures  of 
India  and  of  Persia  give  any  definite  information 
about  the  complexion  of  the  Indo-Iranians,  beyond 
conveying  the  impression  that  they  were  what  we 
vaguely  call  white  men.  But  it  is  important  to 
note  that  tall  blond  people  make  their  appearance 
sporadically  among  the  Tadjiks  of  Persia  and  of 

*  Die  Italiker  in  der  Poebene,  1879.  See  for  much 
valuable  information  respecting  the  races  of  the  Balkan 
and  Italic  peninsulse,  Zampa's  essay  "  Vergleichende  An- 
thropologische  Ethnographie  von  Apulien,"  Zeitschrift 
fiir  Ethnologie,  xvlii.,  1886. 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  297 

Turkestan;  that  the  Siah-posh  and  Galtehas  of  the 
mountainous  barrier  between  Turkestan  and  India 
are  such;  and  that  the  same  characters  obtain  large- 
ly among  the  Kurds  on  the  western  frontier  of 
Persia,  at  the  present  day.  The  Kurds  and  the 
Galtehas  are  generally  broad-headed,  the  others 
are  long-headed.  These  people  and  the  ancient 
Alans  thus  form  a  series  of  stepping-stones  between 
the  blond  Aryans  of  Europe  and  those  of  Asia, 
standing  up  amidst  the  flood  of  Finno-tataric  peo- 
ple which  has  inundated  the  rest  of  the  interval 
between  the  sources  of  the  Dnieper  and  those  of 
the  Oxus.  If  only  more  was  known  about  the 
Sarmatians  and  the  Scythians  of  the  oldest  his- 
torians, it  is  not  improbable,  I  think,  that  we  should 
discover  that,  even  in  historical  times,  the  area 
occupied  by  the  blond  long-heads  of  Aryan  speech 
has  been,  at  least  temporarily,  continuous  from  the 
shores  of  the  North  Sea  to  central  Asia. 

Suppose  it  to  be  admitted,  as  a  fair  working 
hypothesis,  that  the  blond  long-heads  once  ex- 
tended without  a  break  over  this  vast  area,  and  that 
all  the  Aryan  tongues  have  been  developed  out  of 
their  original  speech,  the  question  respecting  the 
home  of  the  race  when  the  various  families  of 
Aryan  speech  were  in  the  condition  of  inceptive 
dialects  remains  open.  For  all  that,  at  first,  ap- 
pears to  the  contrary,  it  may  have  been  in  the 
west,  or  in  the  east,  or  anywhere  between  the  two. 


298  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

In  seeking  for  a  solution  of  this  obscure  problem, 
it  is  an  important  preliminary  to  grasp  the  truth 
that  the  Aryan  race  must  be  much  older  than  the 
primitive  Aryan  speech.  It  is  not  to  be  seriously 
imagined  that  the  latter  sprang  suddenly  into  ex- 
istence, by  the  act  of  a  jealous  Deity,  apparently 
unaware  of  the  strength  of  man's  native  tendency 
towards  confusion  of  speech.  But  if  all  the  di- 
verse languages  of  men  were  not  brought  suddenly 
into  existence,  in  order  to  frustrate  the  plans  of 
the  audacious  bricklayers  of  the  plain  of  Shinar; 
if  this  professedly  historical  statement  is  only  an- 
other "  type,"  and  primitive  Aryan,  like  all  other 
languages,  was  built  up  by  a  secular  process  of  de- 
velopment, the  blond  long-heads,  among  whom  it 
grew  into  shape,  must  for  ages  have  been,  philo- 
logically  speaking,  non-Aryans,  or  perhaps  one 
should  say  "  pro-Aryans."  I  suppose  it  may  be 
safely  assumed  that  Sanskrit  and  Zend  and  Greek 
were  fully  differentiated  in  the  year  1500  b.  c.  If 
so,  how  much  further  back  must  the  existence  of 
the  primitive  Aryan,  from  which  these  proceeded, 
be  dated?  And  how  much  further  yet,  that  real 
juventus  mundi  (so  far  as  man  is  concerned)  when 
primitive  Aryan  was  in  course  of  formation? 
And  how  much  further  still,  the  differentiation  of 
the  nascent  Aryan  blond  long-head  race  from  the 
primitive  stock  of  mankind? 

If  any  one  maintains  that  the  blond  long-headed 
people,    among    whom,    by    the    hypothesis,    the 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  299 

primitive  Aryan  language  was  generated  may  have 
formed  a  separate  race  as  far  back  as  the  pleisto- 
cene epoch,  when  the  first  unquestionable  records 
of  man  make  their  appearance,  I  do  not  see  that 
he  goes  beyond  possibility — though,  of  course,  that 
is  a  very  difEerent  thing  from  proving  his  case. 
But,  if  the  blond  long-heads  are  thus  ancient,  the 
problem  of  their  primitive  seat  puts  on  an  alto- 
gether new  aspect.  Speculation  must  take  into 
account  climatal  and  geographical  conditions 
widely  diiferent  from  those  which  obtain  in 
northern  Eurasia  at  the  present  day.  During 
much  of  the  vast  length  of  the  pleistocene  period, 
it  would  seem  that  men  could  no  more  have  lived 
either  in  Britain  north  of  the  Thames,  or  in  Scan- 
dinavia, or  in  northern  Germany,  or  in  northern 
Kussia,  than  they  can  live  now  in  the  interior  of 
Greenland,  seeing  that  the  land  was  covered  by  a 
great  ice  sheet  like  that  which  at  present  shrouds 
the  latter  country.  At  that  epoch,  the  blond  long- 
heads cannot  reasonably  be  supposed  to  have  occu- 
pied the  regions  in  which  we  meet  with  them  in  the 
oldest  times  of  which  history  has  kept  a  record. 

But  even  if  we  are  content  to  assume  a  vastly 
less  antiquity  for  the  Aryan  race;  if  we  only  make 
the  assumption,  for  which  there  is  considerable 
positive  warranty,  that  it  has  existed  in  Europe 
ever  since  the  end  of  the  pleistocene  period — when 
the  fauna  and  flora  assumed  approximately  their 
present  condition  and  the  state  of  things  called 


300  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  "n 

Eecent  by  geologists  set  in — we  have  to  reckon 
with  a  distribution  of  land  and  water,  not  only 
very  different  from  that  which  at  present  obtains 
in  northern  F'urasia,  but  of  such  a  nature  that  it 
can  hardly  fail  to  have  exerted  a  great  influence 
on  the  development  and  the  distribution  of  the 
races  of  mankind.     (See  page  250,  note  f.) 

At  the  present  time,  four  great  separate  bodies 
of  water,  the  Black  Sea,  the  Caspian,  the  Sea  of 
Aral,  and  Lake  Balkash,  occupy  the  southern  end 
of  the  vast  plains  which  extend  from  the  Arctic 
Sea  to  the  highlands  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  of 
Asia  Minor,  of  Persia,  of  Afghanistan,  and  of  the 
high  plateaus  of  central  Asia  as  far  as  the  Altai. 
They  lie  for  the  most  part  between  the  parallels 
of  40°  and  50°  N.  and  are  separated  by  wide 
stretches  of  barren  and  salt-laden  wastes.  The 
surface  of  Balkash  is  514  feet,  that  of  the  Aral 
158  feet  above  the  Mediterranean,  that  of  the  Cas- 
pian eighty-five  feet  below  it.  The  Black  Sea  is  in 
free  communication  with  the  Mediterranean  by  the 
Bosphorus  and  the  Dardanelles;  but  the  others,  in 
historical  times,  have  been,  at  most,  temporarily 
connected  with  it  and  with  one  another,  by  rela- 
tively insignificant  channels.  This  state  of  things, 
however,  is  comparatively  modern.  At  no  very  dis- 
tant period,  the  land  of  Asia  Minor  was  continu- 
ous with  that  of  Europe,  across  the  present  site  of 
the  Bosphorus,  forming  a  barrier  several  hundred 
feet  high,  which  dammed  up  the  waters  of  the 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  301 

Black  Sea.  A  vast  extent  of  eastern  Europe  and 
of  western  central  Asia  thus  became  a  huge  reser- 
voir, the  lowest  part  of  the  lip  of  which  was  prob- 
ably situated  somewhat  more  than  200  feet  above 
the  sea  level,  along  the  present  southern  watershed 
of  the  Obi,  which  flows  into  the  Arctic  Ocean. 
Into  this  basin,  the  largest  rivers  of  Europe,  such 
as  the  Danube  and  the  Volga,  and  what  were  then 
great  rivers  of  Asia,  the  Oxus  and  Jaxartes,  with 
all  the  intermediate  affluents,  poured  their  waters. 
In  addition,  it  received  the  overflow  of  Lake  Bal- 
kash,  then  much  larger;  and,  probably,  that  of  the 
inland  sea  of  Mongolia.  At  that  time,  the  level 
of  the  Sea  of  Aral  stood  at  least  60  feet  higher  than 
it  does  at  present.*  Instead  of  the  separate  Black, 
Caspian,  and  Aral  seas,  there  was  one  vast  Ponto- 
Aralian  Mediterranean,  which  must  have  been  pro- 
longed into  arms  and  fiords  along  the  lower  val- 
leys of  the  Danube,  the  Volga  (in  the  course  of 
which  Caspian  shells  are  now  found  as  far  as  the 
Kuma),  the  Ural,  and  the  other  affluent  rivers — 
while  it  seems  to  have  sent  its  overflow,  northward, 
through  the  present  basin  of  the  Obi.  At  the 
same  time,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  north- 
ern coast  of  Asia,  which  everywhere  shows  signs  of 
recent  slow  upheaval,  was  situated  far  to  the  south 
of  its  present  position.     The  consequences  of  this 

•  This  is  proved  by  the  old  shore-marks  on  the  hill 
of  Kashkanatao  in  the  midst  of  the  delta  of  the  Oxus. 
Some  authorities  put  the  ancient  level  very  much  higher — 
200  feet  or  more  (Keane,  Asia,  p.  408). 


302  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

state  of  things  have  an  extremely  important  bear- 
ing on  the  question  under  discussion.  In  the  first 
place,  an  insular  climate  must  be  substituted  for 
the  present  extremely  continental  climate  of  west 
central  Eurasia.  That  is  an  important  fact  in 
many  ways.  For  example,  the  present  eastern  cli- 
matal  limitations  of  the  beech  could  not  have  ex- 
isted, and  if  primitive  Aryan  goes  back  thus  far, 
the  arguments  based  upon  the  occurrence  of  its 
name  in  some  Aryan  languages  and  not  in  others 
lose  their  force.  In  the  second  place,  the  European 
and  the  Asiatic  moieties  of  the  great  Eurasiatic 
plains  were  cut  off  from  one  another  by  the 
Ponto-Aralian  Mediterranean  and  its  prolonga- 
tions. In  the  third  place,  direct  access  to  Asia 
Minor,  to  the  Caucasus,  to  the  Persian  highlands, 
and  to  Afghanistan,  from  the  European  moiety 
was  completely  barred;  while  the  tribes  of  eastern 
central  Asia  were  equally  shut  out  from  Persia 
and  from  India  by  huge  mountain  ranges  and  table 
lands.  Thus,  if  the  blond  long-head  race  existed 
so  far  back  as  the  epoch  in  which  the  Ponto-Aralian 
Mediterranean  had  its  full  extension,  space  for  its 
development,  under  the  most  favourable  condi- 
tions, and  free  from  any  serious  intrusion  of  for- 
eign elements  from  Asia,  was  presented  in  north- 
ern and  eastern  Europe. 

When  the  slow  erosion  of  the  passage  of  the 
Dardanelles  drained  the  Ponto-Aralian  waters  into 
the  Mediterranean,  they  must  have  everywhere 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  303 

fallen  as  near  the  level  of  the  latter  as  the  make  of 
the  country  permitted,  remaining,  at  first,  con- 
nected by  such  straits  as  that  of  which  the  traces 
yet  persist  between  the  Black  and  the  Caspian, 
the  Caspian  and  the  Aral  Seas  respectively.  Then, 
the  gradual  elevation  of  the  land  of  northern 
Siberia,  bringing  in  its  train  a  continental  climate, 
with  its  dry  air  and  intense  summer  heats,  the 
loss  by  evaporation  soon  exceeded  the  greatly  re- 
duced supply  of  water,  and  Balkash,  Aral,  and 
Caspian  gradually  shrank  to  their  present  dimen- 
sions. In  the  course  of  this  process,  the  broad 
plains  between  the  separated  inland  seas,  as  soon 
as  they  were  laid  bare,  threw  open  easy  routes  to 
the  Caucasus  and  to  Turkestan,  which  might  well 
be  utilised  by  the  blond  long-heads  moving  east- 
ward through  the  plains,  contemporaneously  left 
dry,  south  and  east  of  the  Ural  chain.  The  same 
process  of  desiccation,  however,  would  render  the 
route  from  east  central  Asia  westward  as  easily 
practicable;  and,  in  the  end,  the  Aryan  stock  might 
easily  be  cut  in  two,  as  we  now  find  it  to  be,  by  the 
movement  of  the  Mongoloid  brunet  broad-heads  to 
the  west. 

Thus  we  arrive  at  what  is  practically  Latham's 
Sarmatian  hypothesis — if  the  term  "  Sarmatian  " 
is  stretched  a  little,  so  as  to  include  the  higher 
parts  and  a  good  deal  of  the  northern  slopes  of 
Europe  between  the  Ural  and  the  German  Ocean; 
an  immense  area  of  country,  at  least  as  large  as 


304  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

that  now  included  between  the  Black  Sea,  the  At- 
lantic, the  Baltic,  and  the  Mediterranean. 

If  we  imagine  the  blond  long-head  race  to  have 
been  spread  over  this  area,  while  the  primitive 
Aryan  language  was  in  course  of  formation,  its 
north-western  and  its  south-eastern  tribes  will  have 
been  1,500,  or  more,  miles  apart.  Thus,  there  will 
have  been  ample  scope  for  linguistic  differentia- 
tion; and,  as  adjacent  tribes  were  probably  influ- 
enced by  the  same  causes,  it  is  reasonable  to  sup- 
pose that,  at  any  given  region  of  the  pe^-iphery  the 
process  of  differentiation,  whether  brought  about 
by  internal  or  external  agencies,  will  have  been 
analogous.  Hence,  it  is  permissible  to  imagine 
that,  even  before  primitive  Aryan  had  attained 
its  full  development,  the  course  of  that  develop- 
ment had  become  somewhat  different  in  different 
localities;  and,  in  this  sense,  it  may  be  quite  true 
that  one  uniform  primitive  Aryan  language  never 
existed.  The  nascent  mode  of  speech  may  very 
early  have  got  a  twist,  so  to  speak,  towards  Lithu- 
anian, Slavonian,  Teutonic,  or  Celtic,  in  the  north 
and  west;  towards  Thracian  and  Greek,  in  the 
south-west;  towards  Armenian  in  the  south;  to- 
wards Indo-Iranian  in  the  south-east.  With  the 
centrifugal  movements  of  the  several  fractions  of 
the  race,  these  tendencies  of  peripheral  groups 
would  naturally  become  more  and  more  intensi- 
fied in  proportion  to  their  isolation.  No  doubt,  in 
the  centre  and  in  other  parts  of  the  periphery  of 


Ti  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  305 

the  Aryan  region,  other  dialectic  groups  made 
their  appearance;  but  whatever  development  they 
may  have  attained,  these  have  failed  to  maintain 
themselves  in  the  battle  with  the  Finno-tataric 
tribes,  or  with  the  stronger  among  their  own  kith 
and  kin.* 

Thus  I  think  that  the  most  plausible  hypo- 
thetical answers  which  can  be  given  to  the  two 
questions  which  we  put  at  starting  are  these. 
There  was  and  is  an  Aryan  race — that  is  to  say, 
the  characteristic  modes  of  speech,  termed  Aryan, 
were  developed  among  the  blond  long-heads  alone, 
however  much  some  of  them  may  have  been 
modified  by  the  importation  of  non-Aryan  ele- 
ments. As  to  the  "  home  "  of  the  Aryan  race,  it 
was  in  Europe,  and  lay  chiefly  east  of  the  central 
highlands  and  west  of  the  Ural.  From  this  re- 
gion it  spread  west,  along  the  coasts  of  the  North 
Sea  to  our  islands,  where,  probably,  it  met  the 
brunet  long-heads;  to  France,  where  it  found  both 
these  and  the  brunet  short-heads;  to  Switzerland 
and  South  Germany,  where  it  impinged  on  the 
brunet  short-heads;  to  Italy,  where  brunet  short- 
heads  seem  to  have  abounded  in  the  north  and 
long-heads  in  the  south;  and  to  the  Balkan  penin- 
sula, about  the  earliest  inhabitants  of  which  we 
know  next  to  nothing.     There  are  two  ways  to 

*  See  the  views  of  J.  Schmidt  (stated  and  discussed  in 
Schrader  and  Jevons,  pp.  63-67),  with  which  those  here  set 
forth  are  substantially  identical. 
184 


306  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  ti 

Asia  Minor,  the  one  over  the  Bosphorus  and  the 
other  through  the  passes  of  the  Caucasus,  and  the 
Aryans  may  well  have  utilised  both.  Finally,  the 
south-eastern  tribes  probably  spread  themselves 
gradually  over  west  Turkestan,  and,  after  evolving 
the  primitive  Indo-Iranian  dialect,  eventually  col- 
onised Persia  and  Hindostan,  where  their  speech 
developed  into  its  final  forms.  On  this  hypothesis, 
the  notion  that  the  Celts  and  the  Teutons  migrated 
from  about  Pamir  and  the  Hindoo-Koosh  is  as  far 
from  the  truth  as  the  supposition  that  the  Indo- 
Iranians  migrated  from  Scandinavia.  It  supposes 
that  the  blond  long-heads,  in  what  may  be  called 
their  nascent  Aryan  stage,  that  is  before  their  dia- 
lects had  taken  on  the  full  Aryan  characteristics, 
were  spread  over  a  wide  region  which  is,  conven- 
tionally, European;  but  which,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  physical  geographer,  is  rather  to  be 
regarded  as  a  continuation  of  Asia.  Moreover, 
it  is  quite  possible  and  even  probable,  that  the 
blond  long-heads  may  have  arrived  in  Turkestan 
before  their  language  had  reached,  or  at  any  rate 
passed  beyond,  the  stage  of  primitive  Aryan; 
and  that  the  whole  process  of  differentiation 
into  Indo-Iranian  took  place  during  the  long 
ages  of  their  residence  in  the  basin  of  the 
Oxus.  Thus,  the  question  whether  the  seat  of 
the  primitive  Aryans  was  in  Europe,  or  in  Asia, 
becomes  very  much  a  debate  about  geographical 
terminology. 


Ti  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  307 

The  foregoing  arguments  in  favour  of  Latham's 
"  Sarmatian  hypothesis "  have  been  based  upon 
data  which  lie  within  the  ken  of  history  or  may 
be  surely  concluded  by  reasoning  backwards  from 
the  present  state  of  things.  But,  thanks  to  the 
investigations  of  the  pre-historic  archseologists  and 
anthropologists  during  the  last  half-century,  a  vast 
mass  of  positive  evidence  respecting  the  distribution 
and  the  condition  of  mankind  in  the  long  interval 
between  the  dawn  of  history  and  the  commence- 
ment of  the  recent  epoch  has  been  brought  to  light. 

During  this  period,  there  is  evidence  that  men 
existed  in  all  those  regions  of  Europe  which  have 
yet  been  properly  examined;  and  such  of  their 
bony  remains  as  have  been  discovered  exhibit  no 
less  diversity  of  stature  and  cranial  conformation 
than  at  present.  There  are  tall  and  short  men; 
long-skulled  and  broad-skulled  men;  and  it  is 
probably  safe  to  conclude  that  the  present  contrast 
of  blonds  and  brunets  existed  among  them  when 
they  were  in  the  flesh.  Moreover  it  has  become 
clear  that,  everywhere,  the  oldest  of  these  people 
were  in  the  so-called  neolithic  stage  of  civilisation. 
That  is  to  say,  they  not  merely  used  stone  imple- 
ments which  were  chipped  into  shape,  but  they 
also  employed  tools  and  weapons  brought  to  an 
edge  by  grinding.  At  first  they  know  little  or  noth- 
ing of  the  use  of  metals;  they  possess  domestic 
animals  and  cultivated  plants  and  live  in  houses  of 
simple  construction. 


308  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

In  some  parts  of  Europe  little  advance  seems 
to  have  been  made,  even  down  to  historical  times. 
But  in  Britain,  France,  Scandinavia,  Germany, 
Western  Eussia,  Switzerland,  Austria,  the  plain 
of  the  Po,  very  probably  also  in  the  Balkan  penin- 
sula, culture  gradually  advanced  until  a  relatively 
high  degree  of  civilisation  was  attained.  The  in- 
itial impulse  in  this  course  of  progress  appears  to 
have  been  given  by  the  discovery  that  metal  is  a 
better  material  for  tools  and  weapons  than  stone. 
In  the  early  days  of  pre-historic  archaeology,  Nils- 
son  showed  that,  in  the  interments  of  the  middle 
age,  bronze  largely  took  the  place  of  stone,  and 
that,  only  in  the  latest,  was  iron  substituted  for 
bronze.  Thus  arose  the  generalisation  of  the  oc- 
currence of  a  regular  succession  of  stages  of  cul- 
ture, which  were  somewhat  unfortunately  denomi- 
nated the  "  ages  "  of  stone,  bronze,  and  iron.  For 
a  long  time  after  this  order  of  succession  in  the 
same  locality  (which,  it  was  sometimes  forgotten, 
has  nothing  to  do  with  chronological  contempo- 
raneity in  different  localities)  was  made  out,  the 
change  from  stone  to  bronze  was  ascribed  to  for- 
eign, and,  of  course.  Eastern  influences.  There 
were  the  ubiquitous  Phoenician  traders  and  the 
immigrant  Aryans  from  the  Hindoo-Koosh,  ready 
to  hand.     But  further  investigation  has  proved  * 

*  "  Proved  "  is  perhaps  too  strong  a  word.  But  the 
evidence  set  forth  by  Dr.  Much  (Die  Kupferzeit  in  Eu- 
ropa,  1886)  in  favour  of  a  copper  stage  of  culture  among 
the  inhabitants  of  the  pile-dwellings  is  very  weighty. 


▼I  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  309 

for  various  parts  of  Europe  and  made  it  probable 
for  others,  that  though  the  old  order  of  succes- 
sion is  correct  it  is  incomplete,  and  that  a  copper 
stage  must  be  interpolated  between  the  neolithic 
and  the  bronze  stages.  Bronze  is  an  artificial  pro- 
duct the  formation  of  which  implies  a  knowledge 
of  copper;  and  it  is  certain  that  copper  was,  at  a 
very  early  period,  smelted  out  of  the  native  ores, 
by  the  people  of  central  Europe  who  used  it. 
When  they  learned  that  the  hardness  and  tough- 
ness of  their  metal  were  immensely  improved  by 
alloying  it  with  a  small  quantity  of  tin,  they  for- 
sook copper  for  bronze,  and  gradually  attained  a 
wonderful  skill  in  bronze-work.  Finally,  some  of 
the  European  people  became  acquainted  with  iron, 
and  its  superior  qualities  drove  out  bronze,  as 
bronze  had  driven  out  stone,  from  use  in  the  manu- 
facture of  implements  and  weapons  of  the  best 
class.  But  the  process  of  substitution  of  copper 
and  bronze  for  stone  was  gradual,  and,  for  common 
purposes,  stone  remained  in  use  long  after  the  in- 
troduction of  metals. 

The  pile-dwellings  of  Switzerland  have  yielded 
an  unbroken  archaeological  record  of  these  changes. 
Those  of  eastern  Switzerland  ceased  to  exist  soon 
after  the  appearance  of  metals,  but  in  those  of  the 
Lakes  of  N"euchatel  and  Bienne  the  history  is  con- 
tinued through  the  stage  of  bronze  to  the  begin- 
ning of  that  of  iron.  And  in  all  this  long  series  of 
remains,  which  lay  bare  the  minutest  details  of 


310  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION".  VI 

the  life  of  the  pile-dwellers,  from  the  neolithic 
to  the  perfected  bronze  stage,  there  is  no  indication 
of  any  disturbance  such  as  must  have  been  caused 
by  foreign  invasion;  and  such  as  was  produced  by 
intruders,  shortly  after  the  iron  stage  was  reached. 
Undoubtedly  the  constructors  of  the  pile-dwell- 
ings must  have  received  foreign  influences  through 
the  channel  of  trade,  and  may  have  received  them 
by  the  slow  immigration  of  other  races.  Their 
amber,  their  jade,  and  their  tin  show  that  they  had 
commercial  intercourse  with  somewhat  distant  re- 
gions. The  amber,  however,  takes  us  no  further 
than  the  Baltic;  and  it  is  now  known  that  jade  is 
to  be  had  within  the  boundaries  of  Europe,  while 
tin  lay  no  further  off  than  north  Italy.  An 
argument  in  favour  of  oriental  influence  has  been 
based  upon  the  characters  of  certain  of  the  culti- 
vated plants  and  domesticated  animals.  But  even 
that  argument  does  not  necessarily  take  us  be- 
yond the  limits  of  south-eastern  Europe;  and  it 
needs  reconsideration  in  view  of  the  changes  of 
physical  geography  and  of  climate  to  which  I  have 
drawn  attention. 

In  connection  with  this  question  there  is  an- 
other important  series  of  facts  to  be  taken  into 
consideration.  When,  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
the  Russians  advanced  beyond  the  Ural  and  began 
to  occupy  Siberia,  they  found  that  the  majority  of 
the  natives  used  implements  of  stone  and  bone. 
Only  a  few  possessed  tools  or  weapons  of  iron. 


in  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  311 

which  had  reached  them  by  way  of  commerce;  the 
Ostiaks  and  the  Tartars  of  Tom,  alone,  extracted 
their  iron  from  the  ore.  It  was  not  until  the  in- 
vaders reached  the  Lena,  in  the  far  east,  that  they 
met  with  skilful  smiths  among  the  Jakuts,*  who 
manufactured  knives,  axes,  lances,  battle-axes,  and 
leather  jerkins  studded  with  iron;  and  among  the 
Tunguses  and  Lamuts,  who  had  learned  from  the 
Jakuts. 

But  there  is  an  older  chapter  of  Siberian  his- 
tory which  was  closed  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
as  that  of  the  people  of  the  pile-dwellings  of  Swit- 
zerland had  ended  when  the  Komans  entered  Hel- 
vetia. Multitudes  of  sepulchral  tumuli,  termed 
like  those  of  European  Russia,  "  kurgans,"  are 
scattered  over  the  north  Asiatic  plains,  and  are 
especially  agglomerated  about  the  upper  waters  of 
the  Jenisei.  Some  are  modern,  while  others,  ex- 
tremely ancient,  are  attributed  to  a  quasi-mythical 
people,  the  Tschudes.  These  Tschudish  kurgans 
abound  in  copper  and  gold  articles  of  use  and  lux- 
ury, but  contain  neither  bronze  nor  iron.  The 
Tschudes  procured  their  copper  and  their  gold 
from  the  metalliferous  rocks  of  the  Ural  and  the 
Altai;  and  their  old  shafts,  adits,  and  rubbish  heaps 

•  Andree,  Die  Metalle  bei  den  Naturvolkern  (p.  114). 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  Jakuts  have  always  been 
pastoral  nomads,  formerly  shepherds,  now  horse-breeders, 
and  that  they  continue  to  work  their  iron  in  the  primi- 
tive fashion;  as  the  argument  that  metallurgic  skill  im- 
plies settled  agricultural  life  not  unfrequently  makes  its 
appearance. 


312  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

led  the  Russians  to  the  rediscovery  of  the  forgotten 
stores  of  wealth.  The  race  to  which  the  Tschudes 
belonged  and  the  age  of  the  works  which  testify 
to  their  former  existence,  are  alike  unknown.  But 
seeing  that  a  rumour  of  them  appears  to  have 
reached  Herodotus,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
pile-dwelling  civilisation  of  Switzerland  may  per- 
haps come  down  as  late  as  the  fifth  century  b.  c, 
the  possibility  that  a  knowledge  of  the  technical 
value  of  copper  may  have  travelled  from  Siberia 
westward  must  not  be  overlooked.  If  the  idea  of 
turning  metals  to  account  must  needs  be  Asiatic, 
it  may  be  north  Asiatic  just  as  well  as  south 
Asiatic.  In  the  total  absence  of  trustworthy 
chronological  and  anthropological  data,  speculation 
may  run  wild. 

The  oldest  civilisations  for  which  we  have  an, 
even  approximately,  accurate  chronology  are  those 
of  the  valleys  of  the  Nile  and  of  the  Euphrates. 
Here,  culture  seems  to  have  attained  a  degree  of  per- 
fection, at  least  as  high  as  that  of  the  bronze  stage, 
six  thousand  years  ago.  But  before  the  inter- 
mediation of  Etruscan,  Phoenician,  and  Greek  trad- 
ers, there  is  no  evidence  that  they  exerted  any 
serious  influence  upon  Europe  or  northern  Asia. 
As  to  the  old  civilisation  of  Mesopotamia,  what  is 
to  be  said  until  something  definite  is  known  about 
the  racial  characters  of  its  originators,  the  Acca- 
dians?  As  matters  stand,  they  are  just  as  likely 
to  have  been  a  group  of  the  same  race  as  the  Egyp- 


TI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  313 

tians,  or  the  Dravidians,  as  anything  else.  And 
<5onsidering  that  their  culture  developed  in  the  ex- 
treme south  of  the  Euphrates  valley,  it  is  difficult 
to  imagine  that  its  influence  could  have  spread  to 
northern  Eurasia  except  by  the  Phoenician  (and 
Carian?)  intermediation  which  was  undoubtedly 
operative  in  comparatively  late  times. 

Are  we  then  to  bring  down  the  discovery  of 
the  use  of  copper  in  Switzerland  to,  at  earliest, 
1500  B.  c,  and  to  put  it  down  to  Phoenician  hints? 
But  why  copper?  At  that  time  the  Phoenicians 
must  have  been  familiar  with  the  use  of  bronze. 
And  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  northern  Eurasiatics 
had  got  as  far  as  copper,  by  the  help  of  their  own 
ingenuity,  why  deny  them  the  capacity  to  make 
the  further  step  to  bronze?  Carry  back  the  bor- 
rowing system  as  far  as  we  may,  in  the  end  we 
must  needs  come  to  some  man  or  men  from  whom 
the  novel  idea  started,  and  who  after  many  trials 
and  errors  gave  it  practical  shape.  And  there 
really  is  no  ground  in  the  nature  of  things  for  sup- 
posing that  such  men  of  practical  genius  may  not 
have  turned  up,  independently,  in  more  races  than 
one. 

The  capacity  of  the  population  of  Europe  for 
independent  progress  while  in  the  copper  and  early 
bronze  stage — the  "  palseo-metallic  "  stage,  as  it 
might  be  called — appears  to  me  to  be  demonstrated 
in  a  remarkable  manner  by  the  remains  of  their 
architecture.     From  the  crannog  to  the  elaborate 


314  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  VI 

pile-dwelling,  and  from  the  rudest  enclosure  to  the 
complex  fortification  of  the  terramare,  there  is  an 
advance  which  is  obviously  a  native  product.  So 
with  the  sepulchral  constructions;  the  stone  cist, 
with  or  without  a  preservative,  or  memorial  cairn, 
grows  into  the  chambered  graves  lodged  in  tumuli; 
into  such  megalithic  edifices  as  the  dromic  vaults 
of  Maes  How  and  New  Grange;  to  culminate  in  the 
finished  masonry  of  the  tombs  of  Mycenae,  con- 
structed on  exactly  the  same  plan.  Can  any  one 
look  at  the  varied  series  of  forms  which  lie  be- 
tween the  primitive  five  or  six  flat  stones  fitted 
together  into  a  mere  box,  and  such  a  building  as 
Maes  How,  and  yet  imagine  that  the  latter  is  the 
result  of  foreign  tuition?  But  the  men  who  built 
Maes  How,  without  metal  tools,  could  certainly 
have  built  the  so-called  "  treasure-house  "  of  My- 
cenae, with  them. 

If  these  old  men  of  the  sea,  the  heights  of 
Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir  and  the  plain  of  Shinar,  had 
been  less  firmly  seated  upon  the  shoulders  of 
anthropologists,  I  think  they  would  long  since 
have  seen  that  it  is  at  least  possible  that  the  early 
civilisation  of  Europe  is  of  indigenous  growth; 
and  that,  so  far  as  the  evidence  at  present  accu- 
mulated goes,  the  neolithic  culture  may  have  at- 
tained its  full  development,  copper  may  have 
gradually  come  into  use,  and  bronze  may  have  suc- 
ceeded copper,  without  foreign  intervention. 

So  far  as  I  am  aware,  every  raw  material  em- 


Ti  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  315 

ployed  in  Europe  up  to  the  palaeo-metallic  stage, 
is  to  be  found  within  the  limits  of  Europe;  and 
there  is  no  proof  that  the  old  races  of  domesticated 
animals  and  plants  could  not  have  been  developed 
within  these  limits.  If  any  one  chose  to  main- 
tain, that  the  use  of  bronze  in  Europe  originated 
among  the  inhabitants  of  Etruria  and  radiated 
thence,  along  the  already  established  lines  of 
traffic  to  all  parts  of  Europe,  I  do  not  see  that  his 
contention  could  be  upset.  It  would  be  hard  to 
prove  either  that  the  primitive  Etruscans  could 
not  have  discovered  the  way  to  manufacture  bronze, 
or  that  they  did  not  discover  it  and  become  a  great 
mercantile  people  in  consequence,  before  Phoeni- 
cian commerce  had  reached  the  remote  shores  of 
the  Tyrrhene  Sea. 

Can  it  be  safely  concluded  that  the  palseo- 
metallic  culture  which  we  have  been  considering 
was  the  appanage  of  any  one  of  the  western 
Eurasiatic  races  rather  than  another?  Did  it  arise 
and  develop  among  the  brunet  or  the  blond  long- 
heads, or  among  the  brunet  short-heads?  I  do 
not  think  there  are  any  means  of  answering  these 
questions,  positively,  at  present.  Schrader  has 
pointed  out  that  the  state  of  culture  of  the  primi- 
tire  Aryans,  deduced  from  philological  data,  close- 
ly corresponds  with  that  which  obtained  among 
the  pile-dwellers  in  the  neolithic  stage.  But  the 
resemblance   of   the   early   stages   of   civilisation 


316  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  Tl 

among  the  most  different  and  widely  separated 
races  of  mankind,  should  warn  us  that  archaeology 
is  no  more  a  sure  guide  in  questions  of  race  than 
philology. 

With  respect  to  the  osteological  characters  of 
the  people  of  the  Swiss  pile-dwellings  information 
is  as  yet  scanty.  So  far  as  the  present  evidence 
goes,  they  appear  to  have  comprised  both  broad- 
heads  and  long-heads,  of  moderate  stature.*  In 
France,  England,  and  Germany,  both  long  and 
broad  skulls  are  found  in  tumuli  belonging  to  the 
neolithic  stage.  In  some  parts  of  England  the 
long  skulls,  and  in  others  the  broad  skulls,  accom- 
pany the  higher  stature.  In  the  Scandinavian 
peninsula,  nine-tenths  of  the  neolithic  people  are 
decided  long-heads:  in  Denmark,  there  is  a  much 
larger  proportion  of  broad-heads. 

In  view  of  all  the  facts  known  to  me  (which 
cannot  be  stated  in  greater  detail  in  this  place),  I 
am  disposed  to  think  that  the  blond  long-heads, 
the  brunet  long-heads,  and  the  brunet  broad-heads 
have  existed  on  the  continent  of  Europe  through- 

*  Professor  Virchow  has  guardedly  expressed  the  opin- 
ion that  the  oldest  inhabitants  of  the  Swiss  pile-dwell- 
ings were  broad-heads,  and  that  later  on  (commencing 
before  the  bronze  stage)  there  was  a  gradual  infusion  of 
long-heads  among  them  {Zeitschrift  fiir  Ethnologie,  xvii., 
1885).  There  is  independent  evidence  of  the  existence 
of  broad-heads  in  the  Cevennes  during  the  neolithic  period, 
and  I  should  be  disposed  to  think  that  this  opinion  may 
well  be  correct;  but  the  examination  of  the  evidence  on 
which  it  is.  at  present,  based  does  not  lead  me  to  feel  very 
confident  about  it. 


n  .  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  317 

out  the  Keeent  period:  that  only  the  former  two 
at  first  inhabited  our  islands;  but  that  a  mixed 
race  of  tall  broad-heads,  like  some  of  the  Black- 
foresters  of  the  present  day,  so  excellently  ie- 
scribed  by  Eeker,  migrated  from  the  continent  and 
formed  that  tall  contingent  of  the  population 
which  has  been  identified  (rightly  or  wrongly) 
with  the  BelgaB  by  Thurnam  and  which  seems  to 
have  subsequently  lost  itself  among  the  predomi- 
nant brunet  and  blond  long-heads. 

I  do  not  think  there  is  anything  to  warrant 
the  conclusion  that  the  palaso-metallic  culture  of 
Europe  took  its  origin  among  the  blond  long-head 
(or  supposed  Aryan)  race;  or  that  the  people  of 
the  Swiss  pile-dwellings  belonged  to  that  race. 
The  long-heads  among  them  may  just  as  likely 
have  been  brunets.  In  north-eastern  Italy  there 
is  clear  evidence  of  the  superposition  of  at  least 
four  stages  of  culture,  in  which  that  of  the  copper 
and  bronze  using  terramare  people  comes  second; 
a  stage  marked  by  Etruscan  domination  occupies 
the  third  place;  and  that  is  followed  by  the  stage 
which  appertains  to  the  Gauls,  with  their  long 
swords  and  other  characteristic  iron  work.  In 
western  Switzerland,  on  the  other  hand,  at  La 
Tene,  and  elsewhere,  similar  relics  show  that  the 
Gauls  followed  upon  the  latest  population  of  the 
pile-dwellings  among  whom  traces  of  Etruscan  in- 
fluence (though  not  of  dominion)  are  to  be  found. 
Helbig  supposes  the  terramare  people  to  have  been 


318  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  vi 

Greco-Latin-speaking  Pelasgi,  and  consequently 
Aryan.  But  we  cannot  suppose  the  people  of  the 
pile-dwellings  of  Switzerland  to  have  been  speakers 
of  primitive  Greco-Latin  (if  ever  there  was  such 
a  language).  And  if  the  Gauls  were  the  first 
speakers  of  Celtic  who  got  into  Switzerland,  what 
Aryan  language  can  the  people  of  the  pile-dwell- 
ings have  spoken?  * 

As  I  have  already  mentioned,  there  is  not  the 
least  doubt  that  man  existed  in  north-western 
Europe  during  the  Pleistocene  or  Quaternary 
epoch.  It  is  not  only  certain  that  men  were  con- 
temporaries of  the  mammoth,  the  hairy  rhinoceros, 
the  reindeer,  the  cave  bear,  and  other  great 
carnivora,  in  England  and  in  France,  but  a  great 
deal  has  been  ascertained  about  the  modes  of  life 
of  our  predecessors.  They  were  savage  hunters, 
who  took  advantage  of  such  natural  shelters  as 
overhanging  rocks  and  caves,  and  perhaps  built 
themselves  rough  wigwams;  but  who  had  no  do- 
mestic animals  and  have  left  no  sign  that  they 
cultivated  plants.  In  many  localities  there  is  evi- 
dence that  a  very  considerable  interval — the  so- 
called  hiatus — intervened  between  the  time  when 
the  Quaternary  or  paleolithic  men  occupied  par- 

•  8ee  Dr.  Munro's  excellent  work,  The  Lake  Dwellings 
of  Europe,  for  La  T6ne.  Readers  of  Professor  Rhye'  re- 
cent articles  {Scottish  Review,  1890)  may  suggest  that  the 
pile-dwelling  people  spoke  the  Gaedhelic  form  of  Celtic, 
and  the  Gauls  the  Brythonic  form. 


Ti  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  319 

ticular  caves  and  river  basins  and  the  accumula- 
tion of  the  debris  left  by  their  neolithic  successors. 
And,  in  spite  of  all  the  warnings  against  negative 
evidence  afforded  by  the  history  of  geology,  some 
have  very  positively  asserted  that  this  means  a 
complete  break  between  the  Quaternary  and  the 
Recent  populations — that  the  Quaternary  popula- 
tion followed  the  retreating  ice  northwards  and 
left  behind  them  a  desert  which  remained  unpeo- 
pled for  ages.  Other  high  authorities,  on  the  con- 
trary, have  maintained  that  the  races  of  men  who 
now  inhabit  Europe  may  all  be  traced  back  to  the 
Great  Ice  Age.  When  a  conflict  of  opinion  of 
this  kind  obtains  among  reasonable  and  instructed 
men,  it  is  generally  a  safe  conclusion  that  the  evi- 
dence for  neither  view  is  worth  much.  Certainly 
that  is  the  result  of  my  own  cogitations  with  re- 
gard to  both  the  hiatus  doctrine  (in  its  extreme 
form)  and  its  opposite — though  I  think  the  latter 
by  much  the  more  likely  to  turn  out  right.  But  I 
hesitate  to  adopt  it  on  the  evidence  which  has 
been  obtained  up  to  this  time. 

No  doubt,  human  bones  and  skulls  of  various 
types  have  been  discovered  in  close  proximity  to 
palaeolithic  implements  and  to  skeletons  of  quater- 
nary quadrupeds;  no  doubt,  if  the  bones  and  skulls 
in  question  were  not  human,  their  contemporaneity 
would  hardly  have  been  questioned.  But,  since 
they  are  human,  the  demand  for  further  evidence 
really  need  not  be  ascribed  to  mere  conservative 


320  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  Tl 

prejudice.  Because  the  human  biped  differs  from 
all  other  bipeds  and  quadrupeds,  in  the  tendency 
to  put  his  dead  out  of  sight  in  various  ways;  com- 
monly by  burial.  It  is  a  habit  worthy  of  all  respect 
in  itself,  but  generative  of  subtle  traps  and  griev- 
ous pitfalls  for  the  unwary  investigator  of  human 
palaeontology.  For  it  may  easily  happen,  that  the 
bones  of  him  that  "  died  o'  Wednesday,"  may  thus 
come  to  lie  alongside  the  bones  of  animals  that 
were  extinct  thousands  of  years  before  that  Wed- 
nesday; and  yet  the  interment  may  have  been 
effected  so  many  thousands  of  years  ago  that  nO' 
outward  sign  betrays  the  difference  in  date.  In  all 
investigations  of  this  kind,  the  most  careful  and 
critical  study  of  the  circumstances  is  needful  if 
the  results  are  to  be  accepted  as  perfectly  trust- 
worthy. 

In  the  case  of  the  remains  found  in  a  cave  of  the 
valley  of  the  Neander,  near  Diisseldorf,  half  a 
century  ago — the  characters  of  which  gave  rise  to 
a  vast  amount  of  discussion  at  that  time  and  subse- 
quently— the  circumstances  of  the  discovery  were 
but  vaguely  known.  The  skeleton  was  met  with 
in  a  deposit,  the  loess,  which  is  known  to  be  of 
quaternary  age;  there  was  no  evidence  to  show 
how  it  came  there.  Consequently,  not  only  was 
its  exact  age  Justly  and  properly  declared  to  be  a 
matter  of  doubt;  but  those  who,  on  scientific  or 
other  grounds,  were  inclined  to  minimise  its  im- 
portance could  put  forth  plausible  speculations 


n  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  321 

about  its  nature  which  do  not  look  so  well  under 
the  light  thrown  by  a  more  advanced  science  of 
Anthropology.  It  could  be  and  it  was  suggested 
that  the  Neanderthal  skeleton  was  that  of  a 
strayed  idiot;  that  the  characters  of  the  skull  were 
the  result  of  early  synostosis  or  of  late  gout;  and, 
in  fact,  any  stick  was  good  enough  to  beat  the  dog 
withal. 

As  some  writings  of  mine  on  the  subject  led  tO' 
my  occupation  of  a  prominent  position  among  the 
belaboured  dogs  of  that  day,  I  have  taken  a  mild 
interest  in  watching  the  gradual  rehabilitation  of 
my  old  friend  of  the  Neanderthal  among  normal 
men,  which  has  been  going  on  of  late  years.  It 
has  come  to  be  generally  admitted  that  his  remark- 
able cranium  is  no  more  than  a  strongly-marked 
example  of  a  type  which  occurs,  not  only  among 
other  prehistoric  men,  but  is  met  with,  sporadic- 
ally, among  the  moderns;  and  that,  after  all,  I  was. 
not  so  wrong  as  I  ought  to  have  been,  when  I  in- 
dicated such  points  of  similarity  among  the  skulls 
found  in  our  river-beds  and  among  the  native  races 
of  Australia.*  However,  doubts  still  clung  about, 
the  geological  age  of  the  various  deposits  in  which 
skulls  of  the  Neanderthal  type  were  subsequently 
found;  and  it  was  not  until  the  year  1886  that  two 
highly-competent  observers,  Messrs.  Fraipont  and 
Lohest,  the  one  an  anatomist,  the  other  a  geolo- 
gist, furnished  us  with  evidence  such  as  will  bear 

•  See  p.  202  of  this  volume. 
185 


322  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  n 

severe  criticism.  At  the  mouth  of  a  cave  in  the 
commune  of  Spy,  in  the  Belgian  province  of 
Namur,  Messrs.  Fraipont  and  Lohest  discovered 
two  skeletons  of  the  Neanderthal  type;  and  the 
elaborate  account  of  their  investigations  which 
they  have  published  appears  to  me  to  leave  little 
room  for  doubt  that  the  men  of  Spy  fabricated 
the  palaeolithic  implements,  and  were  the  contem- 
poraries of  the  characteristic  quaternary  quadru- 
peds, found  with  them.  The  anatomical  charac- 
ters of  the  skeletons  bear  out  conclusions  which  are 
not  flattering  to  the  appearance  of  the  owners. 
They  were  short  of  stature  but  powerfully  built, 
with  strong,  curiously-curved  thigh-bones,  the 
lower  ends  of  which  are  so  fashioned  that  they 
must  have  walked  with  a  bend  at  the  knees.  Their 
long  depressed  skulls  had  very  strong  brow  ridges; 
their  lower  jaws,  of  brutal  depth  and  solidity, 
sloped  away  from  the  teeth  downwards  and  back- 
wards, in  consequence  of  the  absence  of  that  espe- 
cially characteristic  feature  of  the  higher  type  of 
man,  the  chin  prominence.  Thus  these  skulls  are 
not  only  eminently  "  Neanderthaloid,"  but  they 
supply  the  proof  that  the  parts  wanting  in  the 
original  specimen  harmonised  in  lowness  of  type 
with  the  rest. 

After  a  very  full  discussion  of  the  anatomical 
characters  of  these  skulls,  M.  Fraipont  says: 

To  sum  up,  we  consider  ourselves  to  be  in  a  position 
to  say  that,  having  regard  merely  to  the  anatomical  struc- 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  323 

ture  of  the  man  of  Spy,  he  possessed  a  greater  number  of 
pithecoid  characters  than  any  other  race  of  mankind.* 

And  after  enumerating  these  he  continues: 

The  other  and  much  more  numerous  characters  of  the 
skull,  of  the  trunk,  and  of  the  limbs  seem  to  be  all  human. 
Between  the  man  of  Spy  and  an  existing  anthropoid  ape 
there  lies  an  abyss. 

Now  that  is  pleasant  reading  for  me,  because, 
in  1863,  I  committed  myself  to  the  assertion  that 
the  Neanderthal  skull  was  "  the  most  pithecoid  of 
human  crania  yet  discovered,"  yet  that  "  in  no 
sense  can  the  Neanderthal  bones  be  regarded  as 
the  remains  of  a  human  being  intermediate  be- 
tween men  and  apes  "  f  and  "  that  the  fossil  re- 
mains of  Man  hitherto  discovered  do  not  seem  to 
me  to  take  us  appreciably  nearer  to  that  lower 
pithecoid  form,  by  the  modification  of  which  he 
has,  probably,  become  what  he  is."  X 

As  the  evidence  stood  seven  and  twenty  years 
ago,  in  fact,  it  would  have  been  imprudent  to  as- 
sume that  the  Neanderthal  skull  was  anything  but 
a  case  of  sporadic  reversion.  But,  in  my  anxiety 
not  to  overstate  my  case,  I  understated  it.  The 
Neanderthaloid  race  is  "  appreciably  nearer," 
though  the  approximation  is  but  slight.  In  the 
words  of  M.  Fraipont: 

*  Fraipont  et  Lohest.  "  La  Race  humaine  de  Neander- 
thal, ou  de  Canstatt,  en  Belgique,"  Archives  de  Biologie, 
1886. 

t  See  p.  204  supra.  %  Ibid,  p.  208. 


324  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  n 

The  distance  which  separates  the  man  of  Spy  from  the 
modern  anthropoid  ape  is  undoubtedly  enormous;  be- 
tween the  man  of  Spy  and  the  Dryopithecus  it  is  a  little 
less.  But  we  must  be  permitted  to  point  out  that  if  the 
man  of  the  later  quaternary  age  is  the  stock  whence  exist- 
ing races  have  sprung,  he  has  travelled  a  very  great  way. 

From  the  data  now  obtained,  it  is  permissible  to  believe 
that  we  shall  be  able  to  pursue  the  ancestral  type  of  men 
and  the  anthropoid  apes  still  further,  perhaps  as  far  as 
the  eocene  and  even  beyond.* 

These  conclusions  hold  good  whatever  the  age 
of  the  men  of  Spy;  but  they  possess  a  peculiar 
interest  if  we  admit,  as  I  think  on  the  evidence 
must  be  admitted,  that  these  human  fossils  are  of 
pleistocene  age.  For,  after  all  due  limitations, 
they  give  us  some,  however  dim,  insight  into  the 
rate  of  evolution  of  the  human  species,  and  indi- 
cate that  it  has  not  taken  place  at  a  much  faster 
or  slower  pace  than  that  of  other  mammalia.  And 
if  that  is  so,  we  are  warranted  in  the  supposition 
that  the  genus  Homo,  if  not  the  species  which  the 
courtesy  or  the  irony  of  naturalists  has  dubbed 
sapiens,  was  represented  in  pliocene,  or  even  in 
miocene  times.  But  I  do  not  know  by  what 
osteological  peculiarities  it  could  be  determined 
whether  the  pliocene,  or  miocene,  man  was  suffi- 

•"  Where,  then,  must  we  look  for  primaeval  Man? 
Was  the  oldest  Homo  sapiens,  pliocene  or  miocene,  or  yet 
more  ancient?  In  still  older  strata  do  the  fossilised  bones 
of  an  Ape  more  anthropoid  or  a  Man  more  pithecoid  than 
any  yet  known  await  the  researches  of  some  unborn 
palaeontologist?  " — P.  208  supra. 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  325 

ciently  sapient  to  speak  or  not;  *  and  whether,  or 
not,  he  answered  to  the  definition  "  rational  ani- 
mal "  in  any  higher  sense  than  a  dog  or  an  ape 
does. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  genus 
Homo  was  confined  to  Europe  in  the  pleistocene 
age;  it  is  much  more  probable  that  this,  like  other 
mammalian  genera  of  that  period,  was  spread  over 
a  large  extent  of  the  surface  of  the  globe.  At 
that  time,  in  fact,  the  climate  of  regions  nearer  the 
equator  must  have  been  far  more  favourable  to  the 
human  species;  and  it  is  possible  that,  under  such 
conditions,  it  may  have  attained  a  higher  develop- 
ment than  in  the  north.  As  to  where  the  genus 
Homo  originated,  it  is  impossible  to  form  even  a 
probable  guess.  During  the  miocene  epoch,  one 
region  of  the  present  temperate  zones  would  serve 
as  well  as  another.  The  elder  Agassiz  long  ago 
tried  to  prove  that  the  well-marked  areas  of  geo- 
graphical distribution  of  mammals  have  their  spe- 
cial kinds  of  men;  and,  though  this  doctrine  can- 
not be  made  good  to  the  extent  which  Agassiz  main- 
tained, yet  the  limitation  of  the  Australian  type 
to  New  Holland,!  the  approximate  restriction  of 

•  I  am  perplexed  by  the  importance  attached  by  some 
to  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  so-called  "  genial  "  eleva- 
tions. Does  any  one  suppose  that  the  existence  of  the 
genio-hyo-glossus  muscle,  which  plays  so  large  a  part 
in  the  movements  of  the  tongue,  depends  on  that  of  these 
elevations? 

[t  Unless  I  am  right  in  extending  it  to  Hindostan  and 
even  further  west. — 1894.] 


326  THE  AKYAN  QUESTION,  vi 

the  negro  type  to  Ultra-Saharal  Africa,  and  the 
peculiar  character  of  the  population  of  Central  and 
South  America,  are  facts  which  bear  strongly  in 
favour  of  the  conclusion  that  the  causes  which 
have  influenced  the  distribution  of  mammals  in 
general  have  powerfully  affected  that  of  man. 

Let  it  be  supposed  that  the  human  remains 
from  the  caves  of  the  Neanderthal  and  of  Spy 
represent  the  race,  or  one  of  the  races,  of  men  who 
inhabited  Europe  in  the  quaternary  epoch,  can 
any  connection  be  traced  between  it  and  existing 
races?  That  is  to  say,  do  any  of  them  exhibit 
characters  approximating  those  of  the  Spy  men 
or  other  examples  of  the  Neanderthaloid  race? 
Put  in  the  latter  form,  I  think  that  the  question 
may  be  safely  answered  in  the  affirmative.  Skulls 
do  occasionally  approach  the  Neanderthaloid  type, 
among  both  the  brunet  and  the  blond  long-head 
races.  For  the  former,  I  pointed  out  the  resem- 
blance, long  ago,  in  some  of  the  Irish  river-bed 
skulls.  For  the  latter,  evidence  of  various  kinds 
may  be  adduced;  but  I  prefer  to  cite  the  author- 
ity of  one  of  the  most  accomplished  and  cautious 
of  living  anthropologists.  Professor  Virchow  was 
led,  by  historical  considerations,  to  think  that  the 
Teutonic  type,  if  it  still  remained  pure  and  un- 
defiled  anywhere,  should  be  discoverable  among 
the  Frisians,  in  their  ancient  island  homes  on  the 
North  German  coast,  remote  from  the  great  move- 
ments of  nations.     In  their  tall  stature  and  blond 


VI  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  327 

complexion  the  Frisians  fulfilled  expectation;  Lut 
their  skulls  differed  in  some  respects  from  those 
of  the  neighbouring  blond  long-heads.  The  de- 
pression, or  flattening  (accompanied  by  a  slight 
increase  in  breadth),  which  occurs  occasionally 
among  the  latter,  is  regular  and  characteristic 
among  the  Frisians;  and,  in  other  respects,  the 
Frisian  skull  unmistakably  approaches  the  Nean- 
derthal and  Spy  type.*  The  fact  that  this  re- 
semblance exists  is  of  none  the  less  importance 
because  the  proper  interpretation  of  it  is  not  yet 
clear.  It  may  be  taken  to  be  a  pretty  sure  indi- 
cation of  the  physiological  continuity  of  the  blond 
long-heads  with  the  pleistocene  Neanderthaloid 
men.  But  this  continuity  may  have  been  brought 
about  in  two  ways.  The  blond  long-heads  may 
exhibit  one  of  the  Hnes  of  evolution  of  the  men 
of  the  Neanderthaloid  type.  Or,  the  Frisians  may 
be  the  result  of  the  admixture  of  the  blond  long- 
heads with  Neanderthaloid  men;  whose  remains 
have  been  found  at  Canstatt  and  at  Gibraltar,  as 
well  as  at  Spy  and  in  the  valley  of  the  Neander; 
and  who,  therefore,  seem,  at  one  time,  to  have  oc- 
cupied a  considerable  area  in  Western  Europe. 
The  same  alternatives  present  themselves  when 

•Virchow  Beitrdge  zur  physischen  Anthropologie  der 
Deutschcn  {Abh.  der  Koniglichen  Akademie  der  Wissert- 
schaften  zu  Berlin,  1876).  See  particularly  p.  238  for  the 
full  recognition  of  the  Neanderthaloid  characters  of 
Frisian  skulls  and  of  the  ethnological  significance  of  the 
eimilarity. 


^8  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  n 

Neanderthaloid  characters  appear  in  skulls  of  other 
races.  If  these  characters  belong  to  a  stage  in 
the  development  of  the  human  species,  antecedent 
to  the  differentiation  of  any  of  the  existing  races, 
we  may  expect  to  find  them  in  the  lowest  of  these 
races,  all  over  the  world,  and  in  the  early  stages  of 
all  races.  I  have  already  referred  to  the  remark- 
able similarity  of  the  skulls  of  certain  tribes  of  na- 
tive Australians  to  the  Neanderthal  skull;  and  I 
may  add,  that  the  wide  differences  in  height  be- 
tween the  skulls  of  different  tribes  of  Australians 
afford  a  parallel  to  the  differences  in  altitude  be- 
tween the  skulls  of  the  men  of  Spy  and  those  of  the 
grave  rows  of  Xorth  Germany.  Neanderthaloid 
features  are  to  be  met  with,  not  only  in  ancient 
long  skulls;  those  of  the  ancient  broad-headed  peo- 
ple entombed  at  Borreby  in  Denmark  have  been 
often  noted. 

Eeckoned  by  centuries,  the  remoteness  of  the 
quaternary,  or  pleistocene,  age  from  our  own  is 
immense,  and  it  is  difficult  to  form  an  adequate 
notion  of  its  duration.  Undoubtedly  there  is  an 
abysmal  difference  between  the  Neanderthaloia 
race  and  the  comely  living  specimens  of  the  blond 
long-heads  with  whom  we  are  familiar.  But  the 
abyss  of  time  between  the  period  at  which  North 
Europe  was  first  covered  with  ice,  when  savages 
pursued  mammoths  and  scratched  their  portraits 
with  sharp  stones  in  central  France,  and  the  pres- 
ent day,  ever  widens  as  we  learn  more  about  the 


▼X  THE  ARYAN  QUESTION.  329 

events  which  bridge  it.  And,  if  the  differences  be- 
tween the  Neanderthaloid  men  and  ourselves  could 
be  divided  into  as  many  parts  as  that  time  con- 
tains centuries,  the  progress  from  part  to  part 
would  probably  be  almost  imperceptible. 


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Book  Slip-25»i-9,'60(,B2S36s4)4280 


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Library 

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29 

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1915 
cop. 2 


L  005  453  326  0 


